An orthopedic spine surgeon claims she visited the afterlife after drowning for 30 minutes in a kayaking accident, before returning to earth with a list that revealed her son was going to die.
The Near-Death Experience
Dr. Mary Neal was kayaking with friends in Chile in 1999 when she plunged to the bottom of a waterfall. She was trapped underwater for a significant period and went 24 minutes without oxygen before being resuscitated against all odds. Before returning to consciousness, she described going on the 'most wonderful adventure' of her entire life, where she reached heaven and underwent a life review.
Asked whether she remembered slipping into another realm, she claimed that as her body left the boat, her spirit came out of her body, and she was then greeted in the afterlife. However, like other near-death experience survivors, she said there were simply no words to describe what it was truly like.
Heaven and the List
She continued: 'I was so joyfully greeted, and welcomed, I had this overwhelming sense of being home. And I fully recognise that not everyone has a beautiful home, but everyone I think can imagine that home where you are completely valued, loved, known, accepted, and that was home. It was awesome.'
Dr. Neal claimed she was led down a pathway and spent what felt like hours beside a 'great dome structure' where she could look back on the river and see herself being pulled out of the shore while others performed CPR on her. She remembered thinking she 'really was dead' and being taken aback by it. However, she claimed it was incredibly peaceful, and added: 'I had this complete understanding of the interconnectedness of all of us — and how it all matters. Everything we do matters, everything we say matters, how we love other people, it all matters, and I had this understanding of how it all works, how there really could be a God.'
'Eventually I was told I couldn't stay and was given basically a to-do list of work I still had to do.' She said that heaven stood out for two reasons — infinite love and indescribable beauty. However, asked on the 100huntley show whether she could share everything on the list, Dr. Neal replied: 'No, here's the thing and I'm asked that frequently, and some of the things have come to pass, and some of them haven't, everything on this list, involves other people, and theirs is really not my story to tell.'
The Son's Death
Dr. Neal spent a lot of time asking 'why me' and reflecting on the prophecy regarding her son, and she said: 'It was terrible. At the time of my drowning, he was a healthy nine-year-old. I had no reason to believe he was going to die at a young age. I was told about his coming death, and of course, as would any rational person would ask, was why, we all want to know the answers to why.'
Tragically, ten years after her accident, her son, Willy, 18, was struck by a driver distracted by his phone, and was killed. It happened just as Dr. Neal completed her final draft of her first book about her experience and it was supposed to be a time of celebration.
She said she initially spent months searching for a scientific explanation regarding what happened to her in the hopes of being able to ignore what she had been told about her son. But it never came. And despite the unimaginable pain of losing him, she was comforted by knowing that he was in heaven, where he would be experiencing immeasurable love.
Return to Life
But reflecting on returning to her body after being given the list, the author said: 'I was just taken back down this pathway and I sort of sat in my body and there I was and I opened my eyes and I saw the expression on these dear friends of mine who had been doing the CPR and I will never forget it. I think it was a mix of this surprise of 'oh my gosh, she's breathing, she's alert, she was dead as a doornail'. And then, overwhelming relief and excitement, and I'm pretty sure in their expressions I could also read 'oh my gosh, now what, what are we supposed to do with this?''
That's because Dr. Neal was in 'bad shape' and had suffered broken legs and the river was not easily accessible. Eventually, she was rescued and made a full recovery, and she was asked whether her medical and science background made her struggle with what she experienced.
She said: 'Absolutely, I mean I'll admit if I heard my own story, I would like to think I would be more gracious, but I wouldn't have been, I would have eye-rolled and thought, sure, whatever, that's a hallucination. It's you know, DMT release, it's something, it's clearly not true. It's not real. It's not spiritual. I'm a very sceptical person and I would not have accepted my experience and didn't accept my experience as spiritual even though I knew what I knew.'
The surgeon also revealed that some things on the mysterious list came to pass — but that it was not yet complete.
