CHAPTER 4: The Cliffs,The Body Bag and D.O.A.

I want to go back for just a moment here. As I mentioned before, I clearly remember starting out that morning on my way back up the coast. What has not become clear to this day, is how long was I riding before I was hit and what lead up to my being run over. Perhaps this will always remain a mystery and in some ways, a safeguard against what may be to painful to remember.

OK. Let's pick up from the view in the tunnel and what I saw when I looked down. If I did not mention it before, I need to tell you that all I was seeing, happened in total silence. Not a sound.

Smoke billowed from the exhaust pipes of the semi as he pulled away and red flashing lights on emergency vehicles and police cruisers flashed as they all converged on this man bleeding on the highway. It was then that I looked away and back towards that bright light. I did this because I felt myself moving upward again. The movement was there but definitely much slower than when I was first in the tunnel. Then a moment later I was out of the tunnel but not quite at the source of the light. In the distance I could make out what appeared to be a city of some kind. I was raised a Catholic but I am not, and at that time was not, a very religious man. So I will not say it was heaven because I never thought of heaven at that time. I do remember that I felt a presence next to me and as soon as I did, I remember a feeling like taking a deep breath of air after holding your breath for as long as you could! I got this feeling because all of a sudden I had answers to ALL the questions I had ever asked! And I mean ALL of them! Let me explain. All the questions I had asked as a child, a teenager and even as a young adult, up to that day and up to that incicdent, I now felt very confident that I knew the answers. Yes, I realize now that must of been thousands but numbers didn't matter then. I was content.

It is hard to put into words but I will try. It was the same feeling you get when you are listening to someone ask you a question and before they can even finish the question, you know the answer. As I drank in that moment, I remember looking around me. To my left and also off in the distance there were cliffs that seemed to come from down below from where I was. I did not get the feeling I was standing on anything but rather that I was just "there" in that space. As I looked closer at the cliffs, I could make out human forms climbing up the cliffs. The people climbing up were scorched and burned but not so that they were unrecognizable but instead as if they were badly blistered. I also noticed these cliffs were all along the edge of a deep pit. I could not see to the bottom of it, but I could make out that it was very deep. At the top of the cliffs there were large gold buckets that had what appeared to be crushed ice in them. This is what each person what trying to get. I watched this unfold and as each person got to the top of the cliff, stood up, poured the bucket of ice over their body, a very bright emerald green snake head would eat them. In a matter of a few bites and without blood or flesh being torn or anything gory, the person would just disappear and the bucket would fall back to the ground, fill with ice again and the snake head would slid back in and disappear inside it. This was repeated over and over all along the cliffs.

It was then that I heard a voice for the first time. It was the voice of a man and as I turned toward this voice I clearly heard him say, "This is not your fate. You have more to do and many to help". It was then that I looked back down and realized all that had happened. I realized at that moment, at that time, that there were 2 life forces within me. My body was one and my spirit was the other. It was my spirit that was there in that place. My body was the man below and I needed, no, had to go back. As I continued to look at the man that had been pronounced dead on arrival (D.O.A.), covered up and zipped up in a body bag beside the road, I heard something. A Minister and his wife had also stopped to see what had happened and had come to my body to ask the Lord not to take this young man and please bring him back. As he prayed, he reached his hands out to touch the bag I was in. That was all we needed to hear. I remember rushing back so quickly again down through this tunnel and the TREMENDOUS pain I felt as I came back inside my body. The noise, the pain, the shouting from the Minister telling them I was alive and the rush of people coming towards me. Through all this, I was astonished that no one could hear me when I said.."I'm OK, I'm going to be fine, if you can just make me stop hurting so much"!
More to follow!