“A Brightly Guided Life”: A Near-Death Experience and the Beings of Light, Part 1 of 2

Dr. Ingrid Honkala holds a PhD in marine sciences, with an emphasis on biological oceanography. When she was almost three years old, a near-death experience opened her gate of communication with “Beings of Light.” In her autobiography, “A Brightly Guided Life: How A Scientist Learned to Hear Her Inner Wisdom,” she describes a wide range of extraordinary experiences that could be considered mystical and out of this world.

“And in the patio, there was a big tank. And when I leaned forward to try to grab the ball, it rolled on the surface of the water and I fell in the tank. The last thing I heard before I drowned was this sense that my heart was beating in my chest. And then it stopped. Once I went into the state of peace, there was a light that came from below.

Now there’s peace, now there’s silence, now there’s light. And the flowers were blooming from nowhere, and it was majestic. And now the flowers were carrying me, and I put the analogy like it’s going back to the womb ‒ you’re just being carried, and just relaxing, having complete bliss.

And again, in just a blink, now I am in a realm that is made of full, bright, intense, shiny light. And this was the first time in the almost three years of my life that I felt, “Oh, I am home, I am home.” And it was that sense of familiarity, the sense of “I am not alone,” that I was being welcomed, with the sense I’m embraced. There was no sense of time. And it’s when I realized myself as a being of light. There was no color, no meaning, no label, no movement, no sound. It was space where there was absolute presence and pure consciousness. But at the same time was the totality of everything; it was a state of wholeness.

When I’m in this state of being, my mom finally arrived home. And when she got me out of the water, she said that I was like a raggedy doll; there was no breathing, there was no pulse. And then she just grabbed me and started to do what she knew to get me back. And then I knew that I was back in the body when all this sense of discomfort and that sense of there was no freedom, that I was kind of trapped in this body, and I was very, very unhappy when I came back.”