Navy Diver Drowns & Meets his Soul Family (NDE)

we didn't realize it at the time but the storm had blown us a mile south of the harbor when we hit this breaker Zone and these are Big Breakers we actually drove right off of one and boom catapulted me into the ocean it's absolutely dark it's turbulent I'm being tossed and tumbled like a ragd doll it was probably one of the most ferocious and vicious moments in my life you can only hold your breath so long and it isn't long that you try to breathe and I drown I drown but there's this pervasive feeling that

I'm not alone that there's something greater there [Music] I'm David Bennett I grew up in central New York as a child my mom was a single mother when it wasn't popular to be a single mother so she kind of would ship me around from one family to the next she would pay them $5 a week for them to care for me to house me send me to school stuff like that she thought she was doing the best thing for me unfortunately a lot of these families I was just an extra kid in the house you

know and um and I didn't really belong in the house and kids pick up on that kids perceive when they're wanted and when they're not wanted and so I never ever really felt like I was a part of any of these families that I was put into it was a very dysfunctional first seven years of my life it taught me to kind of be very independent and self-reliant um as a just as a young boy and then at 7 to 14 I was placed with a family that was a little more grounded a little more

centered but then my mom pulled me out of that family because she now wanted to be my mother and at 14 I didn't know really who this woman was um or my new stepfather at the time and they had a habit of arguing a lot so I spent a lot of that time escaping I went into the service because I really couldn't afford College on on my own so I went into the service to be able to get money for college and to go into engineering school and so I became a mechanical engineer in the

Navy and I did well I was able to be productive and to move forward but I had that philosophy of I'm going to cut my swath through life and so I was very narrow focused I really didn't care what other people thought um I had my sense of direction I was going to go there if you got in my way I would go right through you um I you know so it was a very uh I wasn't a very nice young man in those days and then when I got out of the service I became

a commercial diver because that was one of the things that I really loved I found diving when I was younger I a scuba diving and so I wanted to combine the engineering with diving and so I became a commercial diver and eventually became the chief engineer of the research vessel Aloha I was in charge of just about anything that moved or was mechanical on that ship that was my dream job there's no rule book for the work that we were doing you know and as the chief engineer every job created new challenges and my soul

fed on [Music] that commercial diving in the80s was incredibly dangerous in fact we couldn't get personal life insurance because the survivability of commercial diving back in those days was was not too great and I have many friends that um you know had accidents you know they became embolized or they you know lost their hearing and things like that it was very arduous tough dangerous work in 1983 off the California coast we were evaluating a new ROV a new remote operated summary suddenly we saw that you know there was a storm coming up and we thought

oh well let's beat it back to the harbor before it gets too bad because at the mouth of the harbor many times the break water gets really rough right there we didn't beat the storm the storm overtook us and we had 25 to 30 foot Breakers at the Breakwater to the harbor running the ship is very expensive on a day-to-day basis and so they wanted to relieve that crew the captain and uh design Engineers decided that we would put small boat in the water it was a rubber zodiac which we used to retrieve submarines and

Heavy Seas and we're really confident in its abilities the captain this night decided that I would go I'm the chief engineer normally I do not go on the small boats because I'm in charge of the ship but because we were just evaluating a submarine we weren't on a full-blown job we only had a small deck crew and so the crew that we had were not familiar with the harbor so the captain thought because I'm third officer I knew the har haror well that I should go on this trip we actually went down to the bosen's

locker that night and got out life Fest and the life Fest had been in that bosen's Locker so long they were just encrusted with dirt and debris and we had to like beat the dirt off them just with you know to be able to put them on so we had these big giant pillows wrapped around us you know these big orange pillows and we jumped in the Zodiac and we started heading in we had taken a baron with the radar so we knew Harbor and we could see the shoreline was lit up but we had

this storm over us so it was really dark you know and you could just see the the light of the Horizon ahead of you and so we were trying to maintain a visual on the Harbor buoy but you got to realize that when you're in these these huge rollers that you know we would go up on top of a Crest take a bearing on the Harbor buoy and then run down the swell and up on top of the next one do it all over again it was very long before we'd lost track of the harbor

[Music] buy we didn't realize it at the time but the storm had blown us you know a mile south of the harbor and we were up still a mile offshore when we hit this breaker Zone and these are Big Breakers and we actually drove right off of one and boom landed in the ocean and that's when and the next one was right above us came right down on top of us and and when it hit our boat it folded the Zodiac in half just like a peanut butter sandwich and I was in the bow it

catapulted me into the ocean I'm a trained commercial diver I mean I'm not going to panic because I've spent lots of time in the ocean but this is at night time there's no street lights it's absolutely dark it's turbulent I'm being tossed in tumbled like a ragd doll it was uh it was probably one of the most ferocious and vicious moments in my life because I had absolutely no control and had totally lost my orientation as to what was up and what was down you can only hold your breath so long eventually oxygen deprivation starts

to occur you start to feel this Euphoria and that euphoria is it it kind of overwhelms your senses uh to the point where you're not yourself and and you believe that you can breathe and it isn't long that you try to breathe and I drown I drown I found myself in this absolute darkness and you got to realize I was in this ocean that was roiling you know this you know you can't imagine the amount of noise that an ocean makes when it's when it's you know pounding those waves and so suddenly it's quiet and

it's peaceful I'm not being tumbled and tossed anymore I'm not cold anymore I'm comfortable but there's this pervasive feeling that I'm not alone that there's something greater there you know they teach us about oxygen deprivation they teach us they take us pretty far into the Euphoria you know but this is way past anything I'd ever experienced so I'm like Curious what is this you know I just was in the most violent episode of my life and now I'm in this peace and this quiet and then I saw just this tiny little pin prick of light

and it draws your attention you know suddenly there's this light and I started looking at it and it felt like it was coming toward me I was moving toward it and as I got closer and closer to the light I noticed that it was like Millions upon millions of fragments of light and they were all interacting with each other they were if you've ever seen a school of sardines or or something like that where they all swim in unison it's like they have one mind these fragments of light were like that but they were infinite

at this point I'm like wow you know who am I what am I you know that those types of questions and I looked down and and and it was like my body was becoming one of these fragments of light I started feeling these waves waves of of just love it was like I was being wrapped in this warm blanket of love it was incredible here we tend to add a lot of conditions to our love okay um you know I'll love you and I expect you to love me back and you know that's conditional love

but this love is unconditional and it's just it pervades everything to the point that that it feels like love is the core element that everything is built upon as I got closer three fragments broke away and they were welcoming me home and I recognized them as family not so much family that I'd lived in this life but more of a a greater family that are always with me and and eventually a dozen of them came and they were welcoming me home they communicated to me that we were going deeper into the light we went into

this area that to me felt very spherical very round and we went inside it and I started to relive my life it's more than just a review it's it's a reexperiencing of your life and I got to see it from not only my perspective but everyone I'd ever interacted with it was like my Consciousness had fragmented into these multiple streams of Consciousness and I was looking in it and living my life from all these different perspectives so every time that I would do something I got to feel how it affected someone and I was just

in awe of all of it but I was also I realized that Not only was I experiencing it this way but this all of this family that I had met I call them my soul family they were experiencing it with me and um like I said I was kind of a Brash young man you know and I'd done some things that I wasn't too proud of and so when it came to some of those elements in my life review I wasn't real pleased I mean I was I was ashamed that they had to experience this

because they were living at a higher level of Consciousness than I'd ever known existed and so for them to have to experience this but they didn't they were just loving me and supporting me through this entire review everything in the Life review was crystal clear and so it was awe inspiring but also incredibly humbling to see how much we affect the world around us but eventually I reached a point where I had died but we kept it kept going this next element was not quite as clear and I didn't realize it at the time but

I was was looking into my own future what I saw there was like this Corridor this path ahead of me but in the periphery there was a lot that was available to me that you know I I got the feeling that well if I wanted to I could go this way or I could go that way and it was a little disorienting because again you didn't have all this Focus like you did in the Life review but but my family just loved me they supported me they booed me up and eventually I reached a point

where the light itself now this enormous infinite light spoke in unison and it said this is not your time you must return and I said no way mm uh uhuh I've got a family that I didn't know existed that loves me and and is supporting me um I know that body is is back there and it's broken and I don't mean to sound crash but it just looked like cold meat to me and I just I had no desire to go back to that body and so I argued with what I perceived as God I

argued didn't do me much good because you can see I'm here but I I did I argued with and and the voice came back and it said one more time it said you must return you have a purpose and that word purpose just resonates ated through my being when we've gone beyond this life into the next realm we live with this expansive Consciousness that is so much greater than what we have available to us here in this physical life and so with that expansive Consciousness that word purpose I understood it it was simple it was

efficient I knew exact exactly what it was and with that there's no choice you just come to accept it and with that acceptance I found myself outside my body the original Three light beings who had greeted me were with me and we were observing my body in the ocean as it was being tumbled and tossed my body came close to some of the wreckage of the zodiac and the bow line had wrapped itself around this arm and was tapping me on the chest and I was mesmerized by this I was watching this outside my body

and I'm thinking how is the enormity of me going to fit in there and so another wave hit the Zodiac and when it did the Zodiac had a little bit of air left in one of the pontoons and it popped up and when it did it cinched that line around my arm and it pulled my arm up actually dislocated my my shoulder and thumb and I'm watching it I'm not feeling it but I'm watching it happen and it pulled my body up to the surface and so myself and my my three Soul family members we

rose up with it and we were observing this as my body got tangled up in the wreckage of this zodiac and another series of waves hit it and when it did it was pounding my body up against the Zodiac and some of that salt water got pushed out of my lungs and my family gave me a gentle push and I came back into my body I have to say dying is hard but coming back to life is even more difficult because you just had this expansive moment and now you're back in this physicalness that feels

heavy and constrictive it was incredibly hard to be back in this body and of course I'm still getting rid of saltwater and I hear my mates they're the real heroes of this story because they had stayed on station while I had drowned and came back to life and they were searching for me and one of them had held on to a flashlight and they were sweeping the surface and trying to find me and I tried to respond cuz they were calling out to me but I tried to respond but all I could you know when

you when you've breathed in saltwater your your Lance is really irit irritated but they spotted me and they came over and we all rallied around that that wreckage and once we were all accounted for we all started heading in you know we still had that mile to swim when we hit the beach because I had a dislocated shoulder and thumb one of the crew put a foot here and a foot here and pulled back and popped my shoulder back in and I pounded my thumb until I got it back in place but boy I felt

like a Mac Truck could run me over [Music] some of my buddies that were in that ocean with me were saying you know Dave we were looking for you for a long time you can't hold your breath that long what happened and I said a Neptune spit me back you know I I'd covered up I just covered up for it in the world I lived in commercial diving was incredibly dangerous and death was a taboo subject and so we didn't uh we didn't talk about death so I didn't feel like I could share it with

my mates I didn't feel like I could share it with my family and so I just kind of I I tried to put it away and I tried to just live with what I could it scared me it frightened me the experience um and that's hard to say for a macho diver guy that I was at the time but it it it really rattled me because um I didn't have any foundation for this experience and so I was trying I was grasping how to deal with it and I found that if I just took the

elements that I was comfortable with and then I would just shove the rest of it away kind of and the the elements that I was comfortable with was in that life review you know I was in my mid 20s and suddenly I saw who I was I saw boy I've got a lot of things to work on but I could accept this is who I am right here here right now and I can work on myself to be better the rest of it speaking to God arguing with God meeting a soul family I tried to

bury it I tried to bury it I like to say that I took it put it in a box wrapped it up with duct tape because divers love duct tape and and wrote on it with a big old marker you know do not touch and shoved it as far back in my mind as I possibly could and and tried to go on with my life [Music] when I came back there were two questions purpose purpose purpose purpose what was that purpose that I was told I had because as I came back into life that it

just kind of like evaporated it was like I had it I I knew what that purpose was but then it slowly dissolved away and I no longer understood the purpose but the other thing that I could hold on to was the love and not only myself but many experiencers After experiencing that love you go looking for it I want that in my life I want that in my physical life because I hadn't felt that kind of love the experiences I had with love were really conditional and um and so to suddenly have this unconditional all

pervasive love that is attached to everything and is the root of everything you start looking for it you start you know where can I find that how can I bring that back into my life it can be a trap actually because you can become so involved with trying to find that that you put your life aside and and and just in the search to try to bring that back into your life or it creates a longing a desire to go back into that and so you know many times experiencers are are very depressed afterwards because

that love was so prominent they wanted it in their life but they can't find it and so they long I long to go back and I'll tell you when it's my time to return I will welcome the return but I understand the importance of living a full and Rich life and I would never do anything to jeopardize that the experience itself has this element of hyper reality and it feels more real and so that gives you that feeling of being home because that feels more real than this this life feels like a dream feels like

I'm walking in a dream because I'm confined in this body with limited mental ability and I long to go back home where I have my totality of who I am um I have a theory that um that when in this body we bring with us just a percentage of our light we bring just a small part of our light with us but when we're released from the confines of this body we're reintegrated with the totality of our being with the wholeness of who we really are there are times when we're having a spiritual experience that

a larger percentage of it is available to us but then you know we go about our normal day and so we're only utilizing a small percent of our light of our greater being I was working as the manager of dialysis programs at St Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse New York and I started having problems with my back but I didn't think anything of it and I was starting to have numbness in my arm and stuff like that and I thought it was carpal tunnel because we were doing a lot more keyboard boarding and and things like

that so um I kind of dismissed it and but then all of a sudden one day in the office it was like my back exploded and I was scheduled to have a meeting with one of the vice presidents and directors and I walked in I said I'm in a incredible pain I'm going to go up to the Ed the emergency department and present myself and while in the exam room the nurse came in and this is a moment when suddenly I recognized it from my Life review it was like deja vu on steroids and she's

got tears in her eyes and I know I know this moment I know this moment and and so the doctor comes in and he's kind of Hing and ha you know he's like well David you know I have to tell you you know he was talking about the masses on my lung and and this and that and the other thing I let him sweat I kind of let him sweat because I really was kind of playing with the moment to see is this going to play out like exactly like I know it's going to play

out and and it did it worked out exactly the way I had experienced it in the light I had stage four lung and bone cancer the uh it started out in my lungs and it metastasized into my spine ate 2 and A2 bones of my thoracic and my spine had collapsed they did additional test they found I had lesions in my hip my brains and my kidneys they you know gave me morphine and Percocet to make me comfortable and they were going to send me home and and they told me to get my Affairs in

order I had one doctor that consulted and and he said yeah you know you've got 6 to8 weeks but I said no because I had seen in my near-death experience that I was going to have cancer but I also saw I was going to live beyond the cancer and that there was purpose attached to it and so I felt that it was necessary and this sounds a little odd but I I used a lot of gratitude this is when I actually started a lot of my gratitude practice I used gratitude for going through the suffering

that I was going through and a lot of people thought that was nuts but it's like you know if you're going to be grateful you've got to be grateful for all of life when you're in gratitude you reach a level of sincerity that is Akin with the Divine in pure gratitude where you're grateful for everything in your life you reach that point of Stillness so that it allows you to be able to see that pathway forward and that I was using that as my guidance and so I was using gratitude as kind of an anchor

to help me and because I was assistant director at the hospital I was able to put together a healthcare team to be able to treat it and by this time I have a pretty strong grasp on my spiritual connection I use that to look at holistic approaches how can I balance off the traditional with holistic approaches and within 6 months um we were cancer [Music] free life itself is this amazing adventure that I never realized before the near-death experience and especially in the Life review you got to see how even though only a part of

our light is with us we're still integral in the experience of Oneness the experience of God while we're here we have a an incredible opportunity actually a bit of a responsibility to try to be the best person that we possibly can be and all the Avenues that that leads us into is amazing a lot of times you know we look at our life with hindsight okay and we see wow you know I did that and even though that was a lot of suffering there on the back side of it I learned this and I benefited

by that you know so even though life gets hard a lot of times we're co-creating with everyone else and so yeah I long to go back to the light where it's expansive but you know what the work that we're doing doing here is just as important it's just as meaningful [Music] [Music]