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Nancy Clark, CT

Ohio

www.freewebs.com/nancy-clark

True stories can entertain people with their associated drama, especially when those stories deal with life after death. Who doesn’t want to know what lies beyond the beyond? A natural curiosity abounds. We are drawn to these stories hoping that one day we will each transcend this earthly realm and find the reassurance that our faith in an afterlife was correct after all or that our cynicism and disbelief were in error.

Without directly experiencing this heavenly realm for ourselves, we are left to read and listen to the stories of those who have gone before us. That is why I am putting to paper my own journey to heaven with the hope that it will inspire others to think deeply about their own mortality and more importantly, that by sharing my experience with others, it will help to build a bridge in understanding that our mortal and eternal lives have meaning and purpose.

I do not wish to entertain you with my story. I do wish to simply share what happened to me. I do not wish to preach to anyone either or try to convince you that I have all the answers to life’s most difficult questions. I don’t and neither does anyone else. What was ultimate truth for ME may not be your truth. I ask only that you give me respect for my personal interpretation of my own experience. After all, I was there! Therefore, I am my own expert on my own experiences. No one else can be that expert on someone else’s experiences, no matter how learned that individual may be.

Where do I begin? I guess from the beginning. In the early 60s I died while giving birth to my son, and I had a near-death experience. I witnessed the medical staff in the hospital trying to revive me, but I had no interest in what they were doing to my body lying motionless on the delivery table below. By then my spirit self had lifted out of my physical body and had entered a dark void. The darkness did not frighten me because I was experiencing the rapture of a love that was very pure radiating from a light source streaming down toward me. I felt ecstatic at seeing this Light, and I felt drawn to it like a magnet. “Yes, yes! I want to go with the Light wherever the Light would take me,” I thought. Bliss was the only feeling saturating my spirit body as the Light’s love was streaming toward me. How could I want anything more than this? Never! Never!

The nurse kept pounding on my chest below on the delivery table shouting, “Come back, Nancy; come back!” I absolutely did not want to come back to my physical body. The Light was calling me upwards toward itself with a love that shatters one’s imagination.

Over and over again, the nurse kept pounding on my chest shouting, “Come back, Nancy; you have a son.” I listened to her incessant voice, and I felt no desire to return. She was interfering with my bliss and the journey with the Light that I so wanted to continue to follow. I made a very painful and reluctant decision to return back to my physical body for the sole reason of stopping the nurse’s incessant nagging!

I woke up in the morgue! Yes, that’s right, the morgue. I was lying on a cold metal gurney with a sheet covering my entire body. I gently pulled the sheet down over my head and witnessed a second body lying on another metal gurney in the room with a sheet covering its body. I blacked out at that point, but apparently someone discovered that I was alive before any further “disposal” of my body took place.

Years later I had another heavenly experience—this time deeper, richer, and more extensive than my first near-death experience. What I shall describe from this point on is the most sacred and transformative experience of my entire life. I believe my first near-death experience I just described “opened me” in some deeper, more sensitive manner to prepare me for this second experience. This time, however, I did not have to die first or suffer from any serious illness or physical trauma in order to have this most sacred experience. The Light apparently wanted to come to me again with a purpose, and this time I was ready to receive the Light without interference from anyone or anything.

Near-death experience researchers call this type of transcendent experience a near-death-like experience or a spiritually transformative experience which means that an average, healthy, and fully conscious human being can have the identical experience as someone who was close to death at the time of their transcendent experience. There are many triggers to this type of mystical experience; coming close to death is only one of them.

If this sounds bizarre to you, it is only because the general public has very little information about these identical experiences as near-death experiences. But in fact, throughout history, there have been reports of saints, mystics, prophets, and others who had this type of transcendent experience without coming close to death. The historical literature is filled with these accounts.

My particular experience is often compared to the Apostle Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. A Heavenly Light appeared before Paul and commanded him to begin a life of spiritual service. Upon seeing this Heavenly Light, Paul was forever transformed and began his ministry without reservation, not fearing what others would think or what they would do to him. It is this supernatural power of the Heavenly Light that raises the individual’s own personal power to transcend all obstacles in one’s path because the truth of that encounter with the Holy One supersedes any perceived limitations, doubts, or fear. What ultimately becomes the “mission” of the one who has touched the hem of the Beloved is loving service to something greater than oneself. This is precisely what happened to me.

Remember this please: when the Divine wants to intervene in our lives, it is done in a supernatural way so powerful, so truthful that our finite minds cannot dismiss it as a hallucination, wishful thinking, or something similar. No, the experience is REAL, more REAL than our physical reality we presently inhabit. Unless one has had this experience, one cannot understand this. But for the one who has had it, no words can adequately explain it.

I was taken up to the heavenly realm on January 29, 1979. This is my true story, and I have not deviated once from this account nor have I embellished it in any way. It is the same factual story I told in 1979 to friends, family, and researchers during my speaking engagements, more fully in my book, Hear His Voice: The True Story of a Modern Day Mystical Encounter with God, and to anyone who will listen. Only the words will change in describing the experience, but the content remains intact.

While delivering a eulogy for a dear friend, the Light that I once saw during my near-death experience appeared before my spirit self as I stood at the podium. My physical body and physical consciousness were to all present and performing the task of speaking the eulogy. But another aspect of my consciousness, that part I call my soul, had lifted out of my physical body and had entered into the otherworldly dimension with the Light.

As hard as I try to convey the image of the Light to others, I cannot do it justice. Words are inadequate. Brilliant, luminous, all-embracing, pick an adjective and it is pale in comparison to the wholly mystical illumination I perceived. My physical eyes did not see this Light; it was my soul’s eyes that beheld the majesty of the ineffable glory of what I was seeing.

Unconditional love was pouring into my soul, the likes of which I have never experienced. No love on the face of the earth can compare with the unconditional love of the Light. Healed in a nanosecond of all the false illusions I previously held about myself—the low self-esteem, the guilt, the inability to love myself fully—I was now receiving the most precious gift from the Light who was showing me how LOVED I am with no strings attached!

The Light infused itself into my being, and I infused myself into the Light, becoming one with the Light; there was no separation. We were ONE. I knew “who” the Light was. It was as if my soul memory had given birth to that knowledge the instant I saw the Light. I understood at my soul level that it was the Light of God. I was back in the loving arms of my Creator! How ecstatic I felt to be “home” again where I came from and where I will once again return when my life on earth is through. I had entered the ultimate destination of my true being and the JOY I felt cannot be measured.

All the while I was merged into Oneness with the Light of God; communication took place telepathically, and everything was happening simultaneously because time as we know it was absent. Traveling at a tremendous rate of speed, the Light and I moved through the dark universe, and I witnessed at least eleven dimensions that are quite different from our three-dimensional world we live in.

My deceased friend for whom I was delivering the eulogy stood beside me, holding my hand and letting me know he was alright and very happy. I had no reason to grieve for him any longer. Again, this was all taking place through an enhanced perception apart from my physical body and physical consciousness. My spirit self which is all-knowing saw that my deceased friend was still alive, although in a different form, invisible to others in the present three-dimensional reality our physical bodies live in.

In that heavenly realm where truth exists, I comprehended everything that was communicated to me by the Light as absolute truth. I didn’t have to question or doubt anything that was said or what I was experiencing.

I was given a life review. Prior to this experience, I believed that when we die, God has been keeping a record of our good and bad deeds and that if we have been very bad, we would go to hell. If we were very good, we would go to heaven and be loved by God.

My life review was so different from my expectations. The Light of God loved me through all the scenes of my human life without casting judgment on me. I was judging myself as I witnessed the events in my life when I didn’t love myself or others. The most important criteria for judging my life review was based on only one thing—how well I had used my life to give love to others. Was I a Light-bearer or a Light-extinguisher?

Comprehending that truth was crystal clear as I was now beginning to understand that human beings have the spark of the Light/God within their souls. It is in releasing that light energy or Divine Love that makes a holy difference in the world, one person at a time and in each person’s little corner of the world through his or her relationships with one another.

My life review was rather painful as I witnessed ALL the times when I withheld my love from others because of anger, frustration, vindictiveness, or apathy. I realized I had so many opportunities every single day to be a vessel of light and love but had failed. As painful as that was to me, the Light of God was loving me through this life review knowing that I was learning a great lesson in realizing the importance of loving others. “I would try not to make the same mistakes again, now that I know better,” I thought.

“God, I want to stay with you forever!” I shouted. I knew I had to disconnect from my physical body—that woman who was delivering the eulogy at the same time my spirit self was in the realm of the Beloved so I contemplated giving “Nancy” a heart attack.

“NO, NO,” I heard the Light of God firmly telling me. “You can’t stay; you have to go back and tell others what you learned while you were here with me.” At that point I was ready and more than willing to return back to the physical dimension in order to fulfill what God wanted me to do. In fact, I was deliriously enthralled to be able to use my life to bring honor and glory to the One who called me to heaven’s door to bear witness to this miraculous encounter with the Beloved. The immense love I had for God during this experience was so enormous that I wanted to do anything the Light wanted me to do . . . anything! Using my life to fulfill this service to God would be my gift back to my Great Teacher. “YES, YES! I will gladly return to the earth plane to embark upon my mission for you, God. YES!” I breathlessly cried out.

“Wait a minute, dear child, before you make your decision; you must know what your life will be like should you accept this calling,” I heard my Great Teacher tell me. I was then given a life preview of what my “mission” would be—the details of my work for the Light. Yes, it would certainly be challenging as I viewed this life preview, but I was reassured that the Light would never leave me and we would work together as a team in getting this “mission” completed. I was told, “As long as you hold onto my hand and don’t let go, I shall lead, you will follow; the path ahead of you will be prepared for you.”

I was so lovingly embraced by the Light’s unconditional love and with the promise of faithfulness to me and to the work I would carry out for God that I had no hesitation at all in making my decision. My soul was bursting with passion to serve the One who had graced me with a new life, a new purpose, and a new love that I carry with me to this day.

When I made my decision to go ahead with this endeavor, the Light flooded my consciousness with ultimate knowledge. I knew everything there was to know—past, present, and future. Every word and every thought that was or will ever be spoken or written was made known to me. I was not permitted to remember all that knowledge upon my return to the physical dimension however, only parts of it. From among the thousands of cases that have been studied by researchers, this is what all near-death experiencers report as well. This is one of the classic, across-the-board similarities through over thirty years of scientific research that suggests that this is a common thread among experiencers.

With regard to this issue of recalling all knowledge given to experiencers during their experience, PMH Atwater, noted near-death experience researcher, wrote an article, “When NDE ‘Truths’ Are in Conflict . . .” in the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. publication, Vital Signs Vol. XXVIII, No 4, 2008. In that article, she states, “no single experiencer can supply all the answers! The power of the neardeath phenomenon and what it can tell us can best be found in a synthesis or summary of the many. True, just being around an experiencer or reading experiencer books can be life changing. I grant you that. But transferring to any experiencer the role of speaking for everyone else or being the best speaker or having the most to say or holding the record for the most harrowing case or being the most angelic or gifted or blessed or verified or stunning is tantamount to self-deception. Guess who is fooling whom?”

I immensely respect Atwater’s investigative work in this field of consciousness study. So I support her opinion on this particular topic and that is why I have decided to include it in my personal account. You see, my Great Teacher taught me something that Atwater apparently senses as well and what apparently led her to write an extensive article in Vital Signs about this subject. Let me explain.

One of the greatest light bulb moments during my experience occurred when I learned that the SMALLEST ACTS OF KINDNESS were immense acts, spiritually speaking. Why? It is simply because the ego is not involved in these acts. We do them simply because we are motivated by our “inner voice” to do them. It is the loving thing to do! We do not expect a pat on the back or any type of reciprocity for doing that small act. In fact, we don’t even think we are doing anything of any great significance when we do it. This is a HUGE, HUGE spiritual deed and something the Light of God wanted me to help people realize because when we unselfishly do this, we are expressing through us the Light into the world. The LIGHT!!! Every day there are countless ways of elevating ourselves to a higher and a more divine Light-embodied soul being by simply responding to the love within us by doing small acts of kindness.

As I said earlier, during my life review, I was shown ALL of those moments in my life when I chose not to act upon those small moments of loving kindness. Please, please don’t make the same mistake I did! It is painful to review those moments when we should have acted lovingly, but didn’t.

On the flip side, I was also taught by my Great Teacher that the ego is self-serving. The ego wants to be top dog at any cost. The ego wants to elevate itself to a superior position over someone else, and the ego will find all sorts of ways to trick self and others into believing this. The ego will always try to pull one away from God because its interest is serving self first and foremost even though the individual may think he/she is not acting from an egoic nature. The ego wants to shine. It wants to puff itself up by claiming to know more than others when it comes to spiritual truths. The ego wants praise and attention from others. The ego is a sly thing!

This was also such a light bulb moment for me during my experience. Apparently my Great Teacher felt this ego stuff was very important for me to comprehend and tell others about since our culture is so wrapped up in it and we aren’t aware that the ego should have no part in developing our true spiritual nature. Our “true self” is selflessness which is the divine aspect of ourselves shining into the world as LIGHT. I was taught that our lives here on earth are meant to learn how to express love unconditionally without ego attachment. So when we have our life reviews, we will also see those moments when we allowed our egos to be top dog and not the LIGHT as it should be when we are expressing our authentic spirit self into the world. Again, I repeat, this knowledge is what I experienced as MY truth as revealed to me by the Light of God. I do not intend it to be everyone’s truth unless it rings true deep within. I am simply passing on what my Great Teacher revealed to me to share with others.

Atwater recognized this ego-inflation among “some of today’s new crop of near-death experiencers who are far too willing to come across as blanket authorities on the subject, and they are equally much too anxious to present ‘one-size-fits-all’ answers to life’s greatest questions.” She adds, “It’s a tricky day when we allow others to determine what is right for us. That can only be determined by you through a process of prayer, meditation, deep thought, testing, (questioning), and letting go or surrendering to what many call ‘The God Within.’ ”¹ I couldn’t agree more with Atwater as this is exactly what was revealed to me during my experience with the Light of God!

Another interesting facet of my experience was the appearance of twelve guides who were present with me and who collectively chose to assist me with my “mission” upon returning back to the earth dimension. All were seated around a long wooden table, and all were dressed in what appeared to be monks’ robes. All but three individuals had their hoods pulled over their faces so I could not see who they were. However, the three to my right had their faces exposed to me. I had never seen these three individuals before my experience. However, a fascinating thing happened once I returned from my experience. A few years later, synchronicity would draw these individuals to me. Upon seeing them, I “recognized” them from my experience but never told them about their promise to help me fulfill my calling for the Light. Why? Simply because I knew that their souls knew what they promised to do, and when the time was right, they would help me in whatever way they were called to. If I told them about their part in my life‘s mission, their egos might feel obligated to help me in some way. No, I knew their egoless souls knew what to do, when to do it, and how to do it without any interference from me. That is precisely what happened over the years since my experience. It was truly amazing to witness this “plan” unfolding in my life and to be grateful for all the help they did, indeed, give me without realizing they were part of my experience to begin with.

I never told these three individuals until very recently that they were present during my experience. I felt they should be thanked appropriately for all the help I was given through the ensuing years. I don’t know if the other remaining guides have appeared in my life to help me with my calling. Certainly, I have felt strong connections with some people and thought, perhaps, that they may have been part of this plan for my life, but since their faces were not revealed to me during my experience, I have no evidence at this time that they were with me during my experience—strong suspicion, but no proof. I hold all twelve of these guides in my heart and soul for all eternity. What greater gift of love can there be than to come to this earthly realm to help someone in this way? To choose to leave paradise for this earthly realm to help others is the utmost sacrifice. God bless all those who have chosen to do this!

The experience was winding down at this point, and as the Light and I were still merged into Oneness, we began to travel back to the earth. I was allowed to witness all the chaos in the world, but I understood that everything was working according to some greater plan that humans could not comprehend. I understood that even the most horrendous acts had meaning and purpose. Don’t ask me to explain this—I can’t, because I left the spiritual realm and I’m now back in the physical realm with all the humanness that living here on this earth plane encompasses. I, too, have questions . . . big questions about suffering and why things happen to good people. But I must say, while I was merged into Oneness with the Light of God, I truly did understand that everything makes perfect sense on a spiritual level. That recall helps me not to dwell so much on the answers that would make sense of this suffering, for I know that when I return to that heavenly realm, I will once again understand EVERYTHING! Until then, I will be patient and trust in a Higher Power who loves us through our suffering, who cries with us, and who gives us the strength to move through it.

Gradually the separation between the Light of God and me began to occur as I felt my spirit self beginning to return to my physical form delivering the eulogy. Before that separation was completed however, the Light of God spoke one last word to me, “Book.” Immediately placed deep in the innermost part of my heart was the knowledge that part of my “mission” here on earth would be to write a book and communicate all that my Great Teacher shared with me during those fifteen minutes I journeyed to the heavenly realm. Passion beyond passion was infused in my heart to fulfill this promise I made at that time to God to write that book.

Then the greatest sorrow of my life transpired as I watched the Light distance itself further and further from me, allowing my spirit to reenter my physical body to finish up the last sentence of the eulogy. I cannot describe the intense sorrow I experienced knowing that the Light was leaving, but at the same time I understood that this parting was only temporary and that one day I would once again reunite with the love of my life, the Light of God, in that heavenly realm I had just journeyed from. And this time I want it to be PERMANENT!

What happened following that miraculous experience? Well, just as my life preview showed me, I lost all my friends because they thought I was crazy. My family didn’t believe me either. Some people mocked me as I told them about my experience; a Baptist minister told me never to speak of this experience again because Satan was working through me. Did that stop me from sharing this story? No way! I have to answer to Someone greater than my ego self. The Light of God is all that matters to me. Fulfilling my calling is my gift back to God, no matter what I have to go through. Other parts of my life preview came true as well, and for those parts, I am extremely grateful for.

But I must say, the Light NEVER LEFT ME! I am constantly aware of the Light’s divine presence with me day and night. Wherever I am, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the source of my life is the Light within me. Much of my daily life is centered upon gratitude. I find so many things to be grateful for, and I take the time to acknowledge this to the Light of God. Daily prayer and meditation connect me intimately to the source of my life, the One I love above all.

There have been so many positive changes in my life that it would take too long to list them all. Suffice it to say, the most important one is that since 1979 I have continued to fulfill my “mission” for the Light of God. I have an extensive public speaking background; I founded the Columbus, Ohio International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS) in 1984 and continue to serve as the coordinator, helping others who have had transcendent experiences to gain support and fellowship in a nonjudgmental group setting, and I continue to help educate the general public about these experiences.

The most important promise I made to the Light, however, was writing the book I was told to write. The result is the national award-winning book Hear His Voice: The True Story of a Modern Day Mystical Encounter With God. In it, I share my heart in greater detail than I can in this book you are now reading. I thought I was no longer responsible for writing anything further since that book was published, but I soon learned that God wasn’t finished with me yet, and I felt inspired to write yet another book My Beloved: Messages from God’s Heart to Your Heart.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my account. I hope I have given you something to think about. My story is not so much about me, but about us. Together we are the Light’s instruments for healing this world and evolving to a higher state of Light consciousness. Above all, let the Light within your heart be the source of your life, and let LOVE be your flashlight to illuminate your path.

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About Nancy Clark, CT

Nancy graduated from Women’s Medical College at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in cytology, the study of cells. She worked as a cancer researcher at a major university, and now retired, she is devoting her life to the “mission” she began in 1979 by inspiring others toward the transcendent nature of life and into the mysterious union with the Light of God. For more information about Nancy, please go to her Web site: www.freewebs.com/nancy-clark.

¹ http://pmhatwater.blogspot.com/2008/08/conflicting-revelations-from-ndes.html