We often talk about Near Death Experiences (NDE), but there are other experiences just as powerful. We call them STEs: Spiritually Transforming Experiences. These are moments that turn everything upside down, without necessarily leading to a clinical death.
I’ve had several of these over the course of my life. And they have profoundly transformed me.
My first exit from the body
It was during my military service. I was home on leave, consumed by anxiety at the thought of returning to the barracks. A dark fear, an almost physical despair.
And suddenly… something snapped.
I felt my mind leave my body. I found myself… on the ceiling. Literally. I could see my own body lying on the bed, like a mere observer. That moment, out of time, changed something in me. When I “came back”, I knew it wasn’t a hallucination.
It was real.
I told a few friends about it. One of them introduced me to someone who had had a similar experience. I was relieved. I might have been a bit “weird”, but I wasn’t alone. At the time, I didn’t know the word “NDE” or about consciousness research. But I knew that consciousness wasn’t limited to the brain.
And this exit from the body… cured my fear.
Encounter with absolute Love
A few months later, a second experience literally changed the course of my life.
I was projected into what I can only call another universe – a space without forms, without landmarks, but filled with energy, with presence.
There, I felt the presence of a Being of Light. Impossible to describe, but absolutely real.
This Being transmitted to me a love of unimaginable intensity. Absolute, unconditional, infinite love.
I wasn’t inventing it, I was receiving it.
And I understood, quite clearly, that this Being was Jesus. Not the Jesus of dogma, but a presence of love ready to give himself entirely.
He asked me nothing. He didn’t judge. He loved me. Just as I was.
I burst into tears. My heart opened wide.
And at the same time, I felt an immense gap between this perfect love and the way I was living. A kind of shame rose up, but it came from me, not from Him. He continued to love me. Endlessly.
Then a beam of light entered from the back of my head, like a laser of peace. It touched a precise point in my brain. And I was instantly soothed.
This experience, in 1986, was the beginning of my conscious spiritual path. Nearly 40 years later, it continues to nourish my inner life.
A universal love that fills the universe
In the months that followed, I experienced other ESTs. Each time, I found myself in a different dimension. A kind of energetic universe, where only pure, infinite Love exists.
Sometimes this love was for me. Other times, it was everywhere, for everyone.
And then I understood something fundamental: Love is the very energy of the universe.
Not an idea, not a feeling. It’s a life force, both gentle and powerful, that connects everything.
A night in the mountains
About fifteen years ago, I had another such experience. I was in a chalet in the mountains, close to a spiritual retreat.
In the dead of night, I felt transported into another reality.
An immense love invaded me. It overflowed from me, flowing through me, connecting me to the Being of Love and to all living beings.
It was an unimaginable joy, a bliss so powerful that no earthly happiness can match it.
It was short… but of incredible intensity.
These experiences are still with me today
I don’t have an exceptional memory, but I remember those moments like it was yesterday.
Because they’re etched in my consciousness. Because their truth has never left me.
They gave me three profound certainties:
- There’s a world beyond the physical world.
A world without time, without separation. More real than this one, because eternal. - This world is a world of Love.
Infinite, pure, unconditional Love. And we can feel its presence right here, in our daily lives. - We don’t needNDE or EST to get there.
All we need to do is love. To really love, even what we find hard to love.
Every gesture of love makes the veil more transparent… until the day the veil falls for good.
