A Life Transformed: Jim's Healing After a Near Death Experience

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are among the most mysterious and transformative events ever studied in science and spirituality. For some, they mark the dividing line between life and death. For others, like Jim, they mark the moment of complete healing.

What Is a Near-Death Experience?

NDEs occur when someone comes close to dying—often during cardiac arrest, trauma, or critical illness—and reports vivid, unusual states of consciousness¹. These experiences have been studied in various scientific contexts, with many survivors describing a core set of common features²⁻³.

💡 Real healing doesn’t always come in a clinic. Sometimes it arrives on a mountain road at 90 miles per hour.

Researchers have identified several consistent elements reported in NDEs:   

- Out-of-body sensations   

- Travel through a tunnel 

  - Encounters with spiritual beings   

- A life review   

- Profound emotional shifts

Some scientists propose neurological or psychological explanations for these features—such as brain hypoxia, neurotransmitter surges, or dissociation⁴,⁶. However, the clarity and intensity of these experiences, and the fact that many occur during periods of documented unconsciousness, challenge purely biological interpretations¹⁻².

Even leading researchers note that NDE memories are extraordinarily vivid – people recall them as “realer than real” – and these experiences “cannot be simply reduced” to brain malfunction. As Dr. Pim van Lommel and colleagues found, patients who had cardiac arrests and NDEs often emerge permanently changed by the event.  In other words, survivors frequently feel the experience brought them deep insight or healing that lasts.

Life Changes After an NDE

What sets NDEs apart from hallucinations or dreams is the lasting psychological transformation many report afterward. Common aftereffects include:   

- A stronger sense of purpose 

  - Heightened spirituality   

- Reduced fear of death   

- Greater compassion and emotional balance

Psychologist Steve Taylor notes:

“Of all extreme experiences, [NDEs] are the single most powerfully transformative”— people commonly feel as if they have “woken up… living in a fuller and more intense way.”

Jim’s Near-Death Ordeal

Jim (a pseudonym) is a middle-aged man who had struggled for decades with bipolar II disorder. His life had been marked by recurring depressive episodes punctuated by periods of hypomania. Medications helped somewhat, but his condition remained unstable, affecting his work, relationships, and emotional well-being.

One weekend, Jim headed into the mountains of North Carolina with his wife for a camping trip. The curving mountain roads were familiar—until they weren’t. As he rounded a blind curve on a steep ascent, a sports car barreled into his lane at over 90 miles an hour, trying to pass on a double yellow line.

There was nowhere for Jim to swerve. The right edge of the road dropped sharply into the forested mountainside and the left side had two cars side-by-side.

Bracing for impact, Jim says that in that moment, his mind went blank. “It was like my brain unplugged,” he later told me. “Everything just… stopped.”

He recalls hearing a loud snap and feeling an electrical jolt pulse through his body.

In a split second, he woke up.

But he hadn’t crashed. The sports car had somehow threaded the needle, passing between his vehicle and another without causing a collision. His car was intact. Jim was untouched. No one, including Jim, could explain it.

“It was like the car passed through my side of the car and me,” he said. “It was like a bubble shielded me..it was weird.”

A New Beginning: Complete Healing

In the immediate aftermath, Jim felt a strange calm settle over him. But more astonishing were the changes that came in the following weeks:

The bipolar symptoms he had lived with for decades—gone.

The racing thoughts, the spirals of depression, the inner dissonance—vanished.

Within months, Jim and and I agreed that he could begin tapering off his medications. Not only did he remain stable, but he felt better than ever—clearer, more grounded, more whole. Years have passed since that mountain drive, and Jim has never had a recurrence of his illness. He continues to check in with me about every six months at his request.

I have no medical scientific explanation for what happened to Jim. Spontaneous remission of bipolar disorder is virtually unheard of in psychiatry⁶. But Jim had no doubt: he had been supernaturally healed. And I tend to agree.

He attributes the healing to a divine benefactor who intervened in that split second on the mountain road. 

Interpreting the Miracle

Jim’s experience bears the unmistakable signs of an NDE—even if he never technically died. His sense of time stopping, the electrical sensation, and the blanking of conscious thought followed by transformation echo other NDE cases described in medical literature¹⁻²⁻³.

Studies show that such events—whether involving clinical death or brushes with it—can profoundly rewire a person’s emotional and neurological patterns³⁻⁵. In Jim’s case, his healing was both psychological and physiological.

Researchers like Pim van Lommel argue that the brain may not be the source of consciousness, but rather a receiver, and that consciousness can operate independently in extreme states¹. If that’s true, then Jim’s moment of “disconnection” could have opened him to something beyond our normal understanding—something that healed him.

Inspiration and Hope

🔔 Near-death experiences don’t just change lives—they awaken them.

Jim’s story is one of those rare events that makes us pause.

It invites us to consider what science can’t yet explain—and what the human spirit continues to experience. Whether you interpret his healing as divine intervention, quantum probability, or an altered state of consciousness, one truth remains: Jim is well. Entirely, beautifully, miraculously well. I am a witness.

For those living with chronic emotional or spiritual suffering, Jim’s story is a reminder that healing is possible, even when it seems improbable. Near-death experiences, by their very nature, shake us awake to the deeper realities that surround us. Sometimes, they bring back more than insight—they bring back life itself.

Jim’s story challenges us to imagine a world where healing can come through surrender. Where grace meets us not in a hospital bed—but on a mountain curve.

“What if your healing isn’t waiting in the future—but in a moment of surrender you haven’t had yet?”

Footnotes

1. Van Lommel, P., et al. (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest. The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039–2045.

2. Greyson, B. (2003). Near-death experiences in a cardiac care unit. Gen Hosp Psychiatry, 25(4), 269–276.

3. Greyson, B. (2000). Near-death experiences. In Varieties of Anomalous Experience, APA.

4. Parnia, S., et al. (2001). Study of NDEs in cardiac arrest survivors. Resuscitation, 48(2), 149–156.

5. Moody, R. (1975). Life After Life. Mockingbird Books.

6. Kelly, E., et al. (2007). Near-death phenomena. In Irreducible Mind, Rowman & Littlefield.

7. Taylor, S. (2017). The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening. New World Library.

8. Long, J., & Perry, P. (2010). Evidence of the Afterlife. HarperOne.

9. Greyson, B. (2007). The Mystical Impact of NDEs. J. of Near-Death Studies, 26(1), 5–18.