hello everyone welcome to Beyond the Veil today we hear from David Bennett a former chief engineer who faced a life-altering near-death experience at Sea in 1983 His Story of Survival and spiritual awakening is captivating and inspiring hi I'm Dave Bennett in 1983 I was the chief engineer of a research vessel and I was a brass young man I was pretty ego-driven and self-involved and I can honestly say that's who I was one night we were trying to make it into the harbor when the Harbor Master wouldn't allow us in because there were 25 30f Footers
breaking at the seaw wall so it was a it was too Hass ofous to try to navigate into the harbor so we about two miles offshore we just were hanging out there but a few of the crew needed to get to the airport to LAX and so we decided to put a rubber zodiac into the water we would transport them into the harbor because you know that that craft can handle a lot and we've used it to retrieve our submarines but this night we had been evaluating a new sub so we didn't have a full
crew on board but we did have a mate that could handle the Zodiac but he didn't know the harbor so the captain asked me to just ride along to help him navigate put the Zodiac in the Water started heading toward the beach this is also at nighttime so the only guidance we had was the harbor buoy and the shoreline was lit up but it was stormy it was really stormy so you know 25 30 foot Seas so we would go on the top of a of a swell we would try to locate the harbor buoy
and then we'd ride the trough down and up on top of the next swell and and we did that over and over but after a while we couldn't find the Harbor View we lost track of it so we just decided worst case scenario if we if we come in and it's not the harbor we'll do a beach Landing so we started headed for the beach and the next thing you know we drove right off a wave that had crested we drove right off of it caught some air even and and we were one once we
hit I yelled to the mate to turn us around because we're a lot safer out to see because we were in a bad place and just as he got us turned around I I looked up and there was the next one it came right down on top of us when it did it it uh folded the Zodiac in half I was in the bow trying to navigate the rest of the the guys there was about five people in the boat at the time were in you know behind me but I was catapulted into the sea
and I found myself just hanging on because it pushed me really deep and I was being tumbled and tossed like a rag doll and I'd lost total orientation as to where the surface was so I had the presence of mine I'm I'm was a commercial I'm a commercial diver and so I'm very comfortable in the water but I had the presence of my not to try to swim but to let the life vest carry me up to the surface and I'm just hanging on trying to protect myself and I'm being tumbled and tossed and eventually
you know you can only hold your breath so long as a commercial diver we're trained to understand and recognize oxygen deprivation and so when I started feeling those initial symptoms of of euphoria light lightheadedness and things like that I you know I started thinking about boy I my life insurance is paid uh you know the wife should be taken care of things like that you know because I knew I I could only hold my breath a little bit longer but eventually the Euphoria just kind of takes over and you just breathe there was a split
second of of a little bit of burning but then boom I was popped out of my body I've talked to other people that have drowned and they they said the same thing that it's very instantaneous that they you know leave their body and so I found myself in this absolute Darkness this Blackness absolute you it felt like nothingness but yet included everything it's hard to describe that but I had just died this violent Death From A Raging Sea suddenly I'm in a peaceful place it's yes it's absolutely dark but it's quiet it's peaceful I'm comfortable
the ocean at that time was very cold and so I'm no longer cold and and it's absolutely quiet and so I'm curious what is going on this is Way Beyond anything in my training but I saw light I saw a little light and I started moving toward it and as I got closer that light appeared to be Millions upon Millions an infin an infinite amount of fragments of light and they were all moving kind of in unison you know kind of like you would see a flock of migrating birds you know and how suddenly they'll
Shi all shift Direction at the same time well these fragments of light were like dancing like that where they were just you know they they'd move and they were multicolored and it was just beautiful the light that they you know emanated and as I got started getting closer I started feeling these waves of love it felt like I was being held in this warm embrace of love and I was just in awe just in awe of all of this I tried to look at myself you know because I I felt like I was just suspended
in all this moving toward this light but I tried to look at myself and it was kind of funny because I realized I didn't have a head I didn't have eyes but I had vision and I could just direct my vision wherever I wanted and I could see that I was transitioning into a fragment of light into one of these lights and so as we got very close three fragments broke away and they started coming toward me and they were welcoming me home and I can't express how in awe and how humbled I was to
be welcomed home by these three beings because I came from a very dysfunctional family I was thrown from one family to the next to the next and you know my mother my birth mother really tried but she just anyway she did the best she could but I had a very dysfunctional relationship as far as family so to suddenly feel like this is a my family I call them my soul family and eventually a dozen of these light beings started greeting me and welcoming me home and it was very emotional for me but then we communicated
not in the way that we're communicating you know with a verbal it was just it was just a knowing I suddenly knew that we were going to move deeper into the light to this area that was more like a sphere it was absolutely beautiful and so inside this giant bubble we started to relive my life and when I said me we my soul family and I were both reliving my life but not just from my perspective but from everyone who I've ever interacted with through their perspect perspective it was like my it's like my Consciousness
fragmented into these multiple streams of Consciousness wow talk about mindblowing it just I was just in awe of everything but then I started paying attention to some of the details and I started I noticed that some of the things that my you know ego took a lot of pride in like becoming the chief engineer of a research Festival in my mid 20s I was very proud of that but in the Life review it it didn't hold that much significance but any time that I did something with a heartfelt connection or with loving intention that would
create some of the biggest Ripples and and so I was kind of a Brash young man in this life and my philosophy was you cut your swath through life so to suddenly see your life in this fashion I was a little and to have your soul family experiencing it the exact same way I was I was a little I don't know I guess I could say a shame that they had to see some of the more unsavory parts of my life where I was just cruel and and so but they didn't they didn't judge me
they didn't you know they they just were excited to be there to love me to support me and to help me get through this reexperiencing of my life so we went through my life and then we reached this this area this threshold where it didn't have any reference to the life that I had lived and I was a little disoriented but my soul family just loved me they booed me up with love and we started going down it looked like a corridor whereas everything in the Life review was absolutely crystal clear but once we crossed
over that threshold it was like looking down a corridor and everything in the center of the corridor was clear but on the periphery you know whatever angle you would want to take it was a little lot of focus and I've come to interpret that that that out of focus part is our free will that we can we can go this way if we want but because of the core that we've kind of given ourselves in this life we'll we'll be guided back to it but how we get there is our free will so we can
you know we can curve back and forth and and I like to say we we could squeeze the juice out of life and take advantage of all the twists and turns eventually I got to a point where the light itself spoke to me so you could this infinite amount of fragments of light in unison spoke and they said this is not your time you must return and I said no way no way I I know that that body is broken I have no desire to go back to it it was just cold to me that
body just seemed cold and life is hard and I've argued with what I perceived as God and I said you know I've got a family that I never knew I had I feel Lov like I've never felt before and that body is just I I don't desire to go back to that broken body and so the light spoke one more time with this loving parental voice that just kind of resonates with you it said you must return you have a purpose and you know when we're on the other side we have this expansive Consciousness it's
kind of like I like to say we're connected to All Souls ever were and all the souls that ever will be so that huge Collective Consciousness is available to us so when I heard that word purpose from the light it just it just really resonated with my being with my Essence and I with that exper of understanding I came to accept it that it was simple it was efficient and so as soon as I came to acceptance I found myself outside my body and my body was still being tumbled and tossed in the ocean and
but I wasn't it wasn't coming up to the surface but eventually some of the wreckage of the zodiac and specifically the bow line wrapped itself around this arm and and all of a sudden a set of waves hit and it popped up the Zodiac and when it did it cinched that line around my arm actually dislocated my shoulder and pulled me up to the surface I'm watching this and all the time that I'm watching this I'm thinking how is the enormity of me this light being now going to fit in there in that dense little
body and and so I was kind of just pondering this and another set of waves started hitting or came through and when when they did they my body had gotten tangled up with all the wreckage and I was thrust up against this wreckage and the waves were just pounding me and it pushed some of the salt waterer up and at that moment that's when my soul family gave me a gentle push and I just buzzed back into my body well I'm I'm trying to expel the salt water I'm thinking wow you know because when we
come back we're like half here half there and I'm trying to remember the purpose you know the I'm thinking purpose purpose purpose and all the while I'm fighting to stay on the surface and you know my survival instincts had kicked in but I was trying but I couldn't stand on the surface and but I still felt like I was half here half there and I had some of that expansive awareness available to me and I suddenly knew I knew there was a problem with my life Fest and when I unclipped it this was an Old
World War II May West which looks like a big orange puffy pillow then the lining had dry rotted and and so what was left of the lining was all saturated with salt water so it was actually kind of weighing me down and so when I ditched the life vest I was able to stay on the surface more especially once I kicked off my steel toed boots but anyway I was able to stay on the surface and the my mates that were in the boat with me had had had held on to a flashlight and they
were looking for me thank goodness because I couldn't speak that well after you know after breathing in all that salt water and so they found me and then we swam the last mile into Shore and it was a tough night it was a tough night once we reached Shore we G came back I was I was hypothermic I was in shock for sure but I was you know aware all at the same time sounds contradictory but it really was my state of being at the time and we did perform first date on the shore once
we got there they po my shoulder and thumb back in and and and we found our way back to the harbor and we went home and I tried to tell my wife at the time my first wife that ID had this experience or that I had died that's the words I said is that hun I think I died and and it freaked her out it scared the heck out of her and so I felt like well I really can't share this with her and my mates and I because we did underwater exploration we put each
other's lives in each other's hands every day and so kind of death was kind of a taboo subject which wasn't something that we talked about so I really felt like I couldn't share this with anyone and I was kind of like wow what happened there but all of a sudden after the experience when I would look in someone's eyes I could see their light I could see that fragment of Light Within them and it felt very intrusive to me it was very hard for me because I was again I was one of those Brash young
guys I was in your face eyeball to eyeball you know when we would have a conversation and suddenly I couldn't do that because I'd look in their eyes and I would see their light fragment and so it felt very like I was it was invasive like I shouldn't have unless I have permission to see that essence of you you know unless you give me permission I shouldn't be able to see that so it was hard to look in people in the eye right away coming back and also I started seeing what I called life force
energies you know AAS I started seeing auras but I called them life force energies cuz I didn't know what I never even heard the term Aura you know because I was an engineer I lived my life to see and so you know I just I wasn't tuned into a lot of things so all of this really freaked me out I wanted my whole life back I don't you know seeing the auras of palm trees in Southern California was like wow look at that and we went back to the shore the next day and I could
feel the Earth breathe and the storm was subsiding but it was still just a Raging Sea and I could I could look out there and I just felt the Earth breathing it was it was incredible experience but I didn't know how to deal with this I didn't have anybody to talk to so I tried to push it down but the three things that I could accept was that Life review and the love those just were so real they they wouldn't leave me I I mean I wanted to push it away I wanted to tuck it
away in the back of my mind somewhere wrap it up with duct tape and big old science that do not touch and just leave it there but experence doesn't let you do that so but it really freaked me out so I didn't I tried to I tried to suppress it as much as possible and I what I did though as I thought well I can I can take the elements that really had meaning deeper meaning for me and the first one was I call it acceptance because in your mid 20s to know who you truly
are to know to have seen that Life review you you have a really good understanding of who you are and I didn't like what I saw a lot of what I saw there was Parts I did like but there were more parts that I didn't like so I figured I can accept this is who I am right here right now and I can work on it and I can be a better person but then the other part was tolerance I really didn't have tolerance for other people I had my plan I was self-involved and I
was going to you know do my thing but I really didn't have tolerance for other people people but in that life review I got to see how how much you know people cross our paths all the time and we interact with so many people in our lives and but you know they make choices that we may not agree with but that's their life and that's their choices and that's okay because I have my life I have my choices so I could after this experience I could be tolerant of other people and their life choices and
I could also be tolerant of where I find find myself in life in the situation that I find myself in because I know that I can work toward change and so acceptance of myself tolerance of others and where I find myself those were really big and the third thing that I took was I was an engineer I pretty much saw things as black and white but I had just been thrust into this world of color and I recognized that there's truth that is factual truth okay but there there's also a truth that's a personal truth
that resides within our heart and whenever we come across a personal truth our heart resonates with it it expands with it and it's kind of a clue as to how to live life and how to flow through life so those three things acceptance tent and Truth got me through for about 11 years and I didn't share it with anybody for those 11 years and then I had a second experience and in the second experience I got to relive not only everything in the first Life review but also 11 years that I had lived since the
first experience and I saw how much I changed I really didn't think I'd Chang that much but I had I had really really by just adopting acceptance tolerance and truth and bringing that into my life I had changed dramatically and so that second experience really kind of told me to start living by everything I had to accept that I have a soul family I had to accept that they were communicating with me because another one of the gifts from the initial experience was I would get these knowings these this information would just come to me
and I didn't know where it came from but as a good engineer I would test it to see how reliable it was how truthful was it how veritical is it and so and I found that it was you know and so I began in that 11 years I eventually became comfortable able with these in you know intuitive knowings that I was receiving but after the second experience I started hearing spirit in a communication type way so I would I would hear I would see I would have visions I would have you know like incredible knowings
and I realized that they were my soul family communicating with me and you know some people call them Angels some people call them guides I don't really get hung up on terms but but they they would communicate with me and each one of them had a different flavor and and so they all had different strengths and and things like that so I had to learn to come to grips of that and I had to accept the totality of these spiritual experiences after the the second experience that's when life started to flow a little bit better
because I started Living with I tried to create what I called my quiet Ministry I wasn't going to go out screaming that hey I had these experiences but I could be I could live by what I'd learned and that could be a quiet Ministry and so that's that got me through until I had a a really big life event where I had stage four lung and bone cancer that that ate away two and a half bones of my thoracic and my spine collapsed and so the cancer had metastasized they found lesions in my hip my
brain my kidneys of course my spine my bones and it was moving very rapidly and they didn't they weren't going to even treat me they were just uh going to prescribe some really heavy duty pain medicine cuz with a collapse spine it was incredibly painful but again this experience I had an almost likely like forview when people were coming up and telling me how I had affected them in life you know and this was in 2000 so now we're talking from 83 then 94 was the second experience now 2000 I'd had a number of spiritual
experiences in between once I started down that path and and so it was this experience really laser focused my my spiritual intention and so it allowed me to be who I really wanted to be and so I balanced holistic approaches along with traditional and I was giving given kind of the gift of doing some healing work on myself which I now do for other people now I'm able to really do the work that I was really called to do thanks for watching today's video if you want to learn how to create a profitable YouTube channel
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