NASA scientist Ingrid Honkala: I died three times and saw the same thing every time

Ingrid Honkala, 55, an oceanographer who worked with NASA, said she had experiences near death at age two, 25 and 52.

As each incident developed differently, she said the result was identical: it entered into a strange state of complete calm, without fear, no sense of time and a sense of separation from her physical body, reports Dailimail. com, broadcast Periscope

Honkala described it as "clean awareness," mired in what she calls a broad, interrelated consciousness filled with light, clarity, and peace.

She claimed that this was, not a brief hallucination, but an ongoing experience that returned to her every time she approached death.

The scientist now believes that these moments provided a glimpse of what lies beyond human life, challenging the idea that consciousness ends when the body goes out.

Its claims, which upset the line between science and spirituality, are already fuelling debate over what really happens when we die.

And despite scepticism, she insisted that experiences were more real than anything she had felt in the physical world.

Honkala said she first faced death when she was only two years old, after falling into an iced water tank at her home in Bogota, Colombia.

She recalled the shock and initial panic of trying to breathe before everything changed unexpectedly.

Instead of being scared, I was struck by a deep calm", she told the Press. "Panic disappeared and was replaced by an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquillity".

She described the moment as having her consciousness separated from her body, allowing her to see herself sailing without life in the water.

At that moment, I no longer felt like a child in a body, but as a clean consciousness, a field of consciousness and light", Honkala said.

In her view, time seemed to disappear completely, along with fear, thoughts, and even the feeling of being an individual.

Instead, she felt completely attached to everything around her.

The"felt as if I had been immersed in a broad intelligence filled with love, clarity and peace", she explained.

In one of the most extraordinary parts of her confession, Honkala claimed that she could see her mother several blocks away and somehow communicate with her without speaking.

Her mother later rushed home and found her daughter unconscious, a detail that Honkala said was compatible with what she had seen during her experience.

The incident, she said, changed her life forever. 'From then on, I was no longer afraid of death,' she said.

Honkala continued to have two other death - related experiences later in life, one during a motorcycle accident at the age of 25 and another at 52 when her blood pressure dropped during surgery.

Despite very different circumstances, she said that any experience would turn her into the same place.

Each time, she claimed, she entered into the same peaceful state of consciousness beyond her physical body.

While many scientists argue that experiences near death are the result of brain activity under extreme stress, Honkala believes that they indicate something much deeper.

'These experiences transformed my sense of life itself,' she said.

Instead of seeing ourselves as isolated individuals struggling to survive, I began to realize that we can be expressions of consciousness that experience life through a physical form. '

She now believes death is not the end, but a transition. 'From this perspective, death does not feel like the end of existence, it feels more like a transition in the continuation of consciousness,' she said.

Despite her remarkable claims, Honkala continued to build a successful scientific career.

She took a doctorate in Marine Science and worked on environmental research, including co-operation with NASA and the American Navy, adding that her experiences near death actually motivated her to want to understand reality through science.

'I wanted to understand the nature of reality through observation and research,' she explained.

While largely maintaining her private experiences for years, she now believes that science and spirituality may not conflict.

Instead, she argued that they can explore the same questions without answers from different perspectives.

Her next book, “2ing to See the Light: A Scientist Guide to Reawakening”, sinks deeper into her experiences and what they can mean to our sense of consciousness. /Periscope/