Reaction & Commentary
Climber who was experienced we went up a world famous climb maybe 500 feet three pitches up and made a mistake with my equipment to begin with thought that I could climb with an accident hammer at the same rate of speed as other people with a couple of axes which turned out
To be false and so our climb was very slow and by the time we reached the top of the pitch it was sunset temperature dropped as the Sun went down hypothermia set in immediately we were in a desperate situation and knew it decided that we were going to either die trying
To stay warm there canoodle up against the mountain or died trying to get off and we decided that we would try to get off the mountain and so it was a harrowing night frostbite hypothermia to the extreme and on our last pitch just before dawn after fighting our way
Across the mountain all night I succumbed to the final stages of hypothermia we were clipped into the mountain on harnesses on straps with iron pins and rings into the granite we were off the ice and Tim was to my left by my lead partner my leading partner and my my
Friend and my temperature soared on my skin which basically meant that my core was flooding by extremities to prevent them from falling off and it creates a fall sense of heat which even though I knew better having been trained as a first responder I unzipped my coat and it’s
Sub-zero out and my temperature core dropped even faster and I began to fall asleep I’d wake up after having collapsed to the rock try to pull on the stuck rope again and again but it was I’d let go of one of the ends of the
Rope and the other was tied to me and I could free it and to collect it Whitman would have meant climbing back up and likely falling 150 feet so we left the rope as it was and I tried to tug on it but I kept falling asleep I pulled
Myself back up this last time after falling asleep and as I stood out by a god what’s called the tunnel vision peripheral vision began to fill in with black and a circle and fade it to black very rapidly to out and I was in darkness but I’m like falling asleep I
Maintained my consciousness you know when you fall asleep you lose your consciousness but I I knew that I was awake and I was in this darkness and I felt myself collapsed but I didn’t feel myself hit the rock and suddenly in front of me if was a great expanse of
Even darker darkness that extended as far as I could see and as wide as I could see and far far in the distance that I’ve never seen anything like it it’s not just like standing on a wicked dark night looking out of the ocean on on a starless moonless night it’s like
Different than that it’s that plus times a thousand and so way far far in the and the almost infinite distance I saw I’m going to speak in metaphor now because I really don’t have any other tools than that so I saw like a pinprick of light that came rushing toward me that filled
From a great distance faster than the speed of light and then filled the entire visual that I had but it wasn’t just light it was like a an amorphous intelligence that communicated directly to me with Oh any sort of matter there was no physicality to this and it said to me
Without language I’m taking you and I resisted because I didn’t know what was going on I was can’t say I was frightened but I was strongly strongly resistant because I didn’t understand the circumstance and it this think rushed right to me and communicated on taking you and plucked me right out of
Myself and carried me up through with a proverbial tunnel but the tunnel was wide and narrow at the same time like infinitely wide and and small enough to contain us but not one or the others both and this entity carried me and I was comforted I was unafraid I was
Confused but I was not lost and I suddenly emerged into this greater infinite darkness that was also illuminated so these two things at once and the entity the angel vanished and I was left alone as what I described as an orb of consciousness it’s ten thousand
Times bigger than my body and I was completely content my first reaction was this is me now I remember how did I ever think I was that thing this is who I am and I was a had no matter no energy no no atoms no molecules no photons no
Electrons and that stuff I was just consciousness but it also contained all of my senses so I was I was brain I was thinking I was a ball and ear and sensories but I was less Peter and I could see in every direction at once and
There was a like a portal opened in front of me if I had a friend which I didn’t but like a doorway or a gateway but it was it it opened up into this long arcing infinitely arcing tunnel that was somehow inside of and separate from
But part of this greater eternity that I was in and there is this flowing Sheen that was transparent I could see through and translucent I could see the sheen at the same time and I it was a flow and I touched this flow with my self my soul
Consciousness and it was all life it was the it was all life of all the universe and all the universes in all life there ever was and will be and it flowed into me and I and I tell this like in a sequence but you know this is a place of
Timelessness which means all time in no time all time in one space and no time whatsoever so it’s really hard to describe it I choose to describe it sequentially and if only for my own sanity so this thing and it in flowed into me and it called my name but not Peter it
Called the name of my soul that in which I could hear the creation of my being from Aeons ago I could see the long tail of my existence that of my soul which was not Peter and I could see the very creation of myself as a photon that was wave and
Particle as part of the light itself but separate and the same as but distinct from and I could see that I had other lives but I couldn’t see what they were and I couldn’t see whether they were sequential or simultaneous I but I also knew that they weren’t me that the real
Me was the soul that contained to them they were little tiny like toothpicks stuck inside this much larger everlasting soul and I heard my name called I saw myself as creator I pardon me I’m sorry I saw myself as creature made even in my sole substance and my
Consciousness by creator though I could not see who spoke inside me who then showed me all of the pain that I’d given away in my entire life from the point of view life review but mine which is different than others mine was I suffered all the pain I gave away in my
Entire life from the point of view of the people I gave it to I intended to give it to and I didn’t intend it to give it to just and I felt that I felt their pain and it turns out that all the pain that I gave them was about ten
Thousand I keep using ten thousand because it’s like some huge unimaginable number that you multiply all the pain you ever gave away to somebody times and I suffered all of that their pain plus x times ten thousand turns out that I gave it to me and they suffered a little bit
I suffered mostly and it was juxtaposed to all my reasons for causing them pain and the voice was saying inside me without sound no gender no language I love you they’re showing me love it was bringing me into luck it was expressing to me eternal love that was it’s unimaginable incomprehensible
I love you I’ve always known you I’ve always known these things about you I’ve known you since you were created I’ve known the long tail of your soul I know what you were like to be a human being in this life I love you as you are I
Made you I’ve always known you have always loved you and I was going through this suffering of all the suffering I gave away but but I was also being and I call it my own hell I created my own hell like Jacob Marley and the Christmas
You know link by link and the I also judged myself as shameful not because of what I had done because was also shown simultaneously that it wasn’t my fault that I caused pain that’s a natural outgrowth of being a human being in this world that’s just the way it is and
Every human being causes pain to other human beings and to themselves and that’s just the way it is and that’s a known thing by the do I God knows this about us and so I was I carried home to heaven with me all the love that had
Been given to me and all the love they’ve been given away that I gave away is like a treasure and somehow it helped me see turn my inner eye to the to the holy divine and was burned clean by the divine fire of purgative love I was and
Then I was when I had no more things I did not need it wasn’t like I would they were bad it was like you don’t need him and here’s how to get rid of him and once they were gone I was in filled with this combination of truth joy knowledge bliss understanding compassion
Hope adoration ah paradise the list is long but it wasn’t they weren’t all separate things they’re all one thing and in the one word that I would use it to encapsulate it all to words beauty and love emphasis on the last and it goes on from there I mean I could stop
Right there and or I could tell you how I came back and what happened next but I you know I’m always been curious of how long was that like how long do you think you were gone and how long did it take how long did you feel like you were gone
Well I don’t know either I don’t know either I’d have a watch on me and I I went to a place of timelessness and so what that means it could have been a second it could have been five minutes I don’t know and I didn’t tell Tim my
Partner what had happened to me but I was gone long enough that he believed I was dead that’s all I can say about it and when I when I came back I chose to come back I was welcome to stay in heaven but I chose to come back and when
I came back he told me that he thought I was dead that I had been dead you’ve been dead you were dead oh well okay you know if you die I die which just really was his bawling and what can you can you talk about that part about how you were
Given a choice to come back yeah I I said I was influenced with this feeling filled with oneness of being this unity I was still separate okay I was as Genesis’s like I was an image of the divine I wasn’t the totality of the divine but it was definitely like the
Divine I was an image of it like a subgroup of it of the same substance but yet less than and I hadn’t gone through the tunnel and I said so you know I haven’t gone the secondary tunnel all right I would haven’t gone through the portal yet do I
Have to go and that’s like you don’t have to go I said well I’ve got a reason to stay my parents were suffering my sister had run away and vanished from our life and broke my mom essentially and and the instant of a thought we were swept across the vastness of the
Universe and brought into the kind of in this dimension of this universe but also outside of it I could see all of Earth all at once all mountains rivers streams oceans fish in particular all icky and birds and animals and trees and plants and everything but in particular I could
See human beings when the human beings were were seven billion of us and were and everyone was covered by a singular Veil the veil kind of trailed over everything in the world and the human beings couldn’t see outside the veil and which is what I could see and the voice
Said to me in the way that I love you now now you know I’ve always loved you and will love you and this love is I can’t I can’t tell you how which it is it’s any words utterly fail it’s all of the universe’s all put together into one
Black hole like Krishna that’s how much and that’s not even enough and um and no one could see it on earth they could all they’re all going about their daily lives being utterly beloved in particular by the divine just like me just like I knew that I was and that I
Knew that all because I was healed and well and without suffering I didn’t have a body to suffer I didn’t have any I didn’t have any suffering at all and the voice said in the way that I love you now I’ve always loved you and I love everyone in particular including your
Parents whose faces I could see in particular in the time of the world and I could see in their souls and their faces their suffering and I knew that from the duration from the time at which I died that night the time of which they died their suffering would be increased
Exponentially took his lost and so even though I knew that all would be well for them when they died they chose to not let them go through that and so I said you know can I come back here if I if I go back to life can I come back here and
The voice said yes but uh you know we want you to stay but you can go back and I said well you know I can go back and help my parents that won’t suffer as much that I choose to live my life and the voice said you won’t live your life
And send me back one how convinced are you that that it was real and not just like some hallucination I it was self evidently so to me you know maybe I’m wrong maybe it’s maybe he’s gonna turn out there was some kind of biological thing in my
Brain but that’s not the way I experienced it it’s more real it was more real to me than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life before her since right and I love in your book how you you told your congregation that you don’t have faith
Can you explain it seem to say that part real quick how you know why you don’t have faith I’m sure I so I’m an ordained clergy person and I served Congregational churches in New England for quite a number of years decades and I came the day I came back from my death
The moment I came back I all faith was erased all belief was erased not just in religion but all belief in our culture it’s it’s completely because I look at it like an anthropologist might all culture from kind of the outside oh that’s nice that you’ve got
That gray sweater hoody on I I got one like that too so I can fit in I and I do actually I want so I came back with no belief in culture or religion or in God because to me God is not a thing to be
Believed in God is a I know God is real I know where I’m from I know where I’m going but more importantly I know that I’m known by the knower of all and I can’t ever turn away from that it’s not something that ever shuts off and even
When I’m asleep it’s still going and so I in addition to having no belief in no faith I don’t have any doubt I am dullness and completely unafraid of death because I know where I’m going to me that’s the most one of the most beautiful things about people that have
Had their near-death experiences they just come back just knowing and I think that’s such a great gift but why do you or I love in your book you say that you it’s like you don’t believe in trees and birds like you know they exist you have
And them or believe in them you know they exist right exactly so I don’t have to believe that this glass exists and that water exists you know we take it for granted we know it exists that was the same way a similar way to which the divine presented itself as
Self-evidently so and the reality you know the Hindus talk about Maya illusion it’s it’s like living in an illusion for me that this is the place that I have to strut I struggle so you say it’s a it’s quite the blessing to know and it is
Okay I you know I there’s a lot of benefits but this deficits to I am I live non-attached to pretty much everything I mean sure I have likes and dislikes and when my favorite mug smashes to the floor when I draw my coffee in the morning it handle breaks
Off yeah I’m like I had that mug for 30 years but it’s not real I know it’s not real I know it’s all transitory and temporary and I am too okay I think it’s a very important thing that a lot of people talk about when they experience
This as they come back and have depressed is the right word but a longing to go back yeah those are yeah yeah I did in a lot and depression and that’s a I had depression that was physiological I mean it developed I wanted I longed to go back so much that
I immediately regretted my decision by the time I started having the mental capacity to consider what I had done and the choice I had made I made a huge mistake coming back all I wanted to do was go home it’s like it’s like living in a 2-dimensional black-and-white world
Here right compared to multicolor multi-sensory VRE ver inversion there it’s and so once you once you’ve been in that place come in here as beautiful as it is and I live in an extraordinarily beautiful place on purpose so that I can get as close to beauty as I possibly can
But even that it’s just like oh well you know that’s really pretty but not the same as ultimate divine beauty yeah I love how you said also the like sunrises are ugly are they they are they still ugly were they just ugly for a while they were they were ugly for a
While there was well the first year was very difficult liver the second morning the first morning we woke up us at that very first morning she’s the very first morning after the climb we drove and we slept that night and then the next morning I woke up after totaling the car
And having a hitchhike back to Bozeman with all my gear Atem took a bus and with other gear I watched the Sun Rise and it was really beautiful but not at all it was like watching a cartoon so it was like being in a cartoon only I
Wasn’t just in the cartoon watching the cartoon I was the cartoon like my body was the cartoon and my thoughts were the cartoon and all of my senses were the cartoon and the cartoon was outside of me and inside of me and it was super
Confusing and I all I all my soul wanted was to be back in the oneness of being and now here I am in this this broken apart place where everything crawl though the love and the beauty and the truth and the hope and the joy are it’s
All fragmented here but so is everything else it’s not just those things everything is fragmented here everything is not in union with the divine and you know the the light pervades all things at all times but it’s still fractured here I live in a fractured body and a
Fractured world and all I wanted was wholeness and oneness which I know I will have again because it was promised to me
