The story you read here is my story, it’s true . Whether you believe it, is up to you; It did happen; it still is.

On a Saturday afternoon in the early summer, thirty years ago, I played golf with some good friends in the Real Estate business. I must admit I was drinking, I usually have a couple of beers or so when I play golf. That Saturday though, I had two medium cold drink cups of scotch mixed with ice and club soda, I was forty three years old at the time. At about the eighth hole that afternoon, I began having chest pains.

At first I thought I had strained the muscles in my upper chest, and played on for the next two or three holes. At the twelfth hole I ordered my second of the two drinks I had. I have to admit, immediately upon beginning to drink the scotch and soda the pain eased and I was able to completely swing the club with no recurring pain. I finished the round, having scored, for me a mediocre round of around eighty-six, fourteen over par. At the time I was a twelve handicap, so as I said, it was a mediocre score.

However, on the drive home, the pain returned. I mentioned the pain to my wife after about an hour at home, but it wasn’t particularly severe, I’d say a six on a scale of ten, so I ignored it, still thinking I had pulled some chest muscles. We had no liquor in the house so I didn’t have anything else to drink. I went to bed around eleven, normal enough. I must have fallen asleep almost immediately because the next memory I have was at 1:00 a.m. when I woke with the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my life. It was as though someone had a rope around my chest and was pulling as hard as they could. I know it was 1:00 a.m. because I fell out of bed and pulled the clock to the floor with me.

My wife awoke and went into complete panic mode. I was making such a noise which she had never heard from me. After checking our sons’ beds she reported neither were home and I told her to call the hospital and have them send an ambulance.

Within ten or fifteen minutes they were there. The lead medic immediately put some nitroglycerine under my tongue and told me to relax as he took my vitals. As soon as the nitro entered my system the pain completely vanished. I was trying to tell them thanks and I would certainly make an appointment with my doctor. The medics simply put me on a gurney and put me in the ambulance, in spite of my insistence that I was fine. They knew better.

I remained fine when the doctor examined and diagnosed me as having suffered severe angina. I remained ready to go home. But the doctor told both my wife and me he felt a night of observation in the hospital wouldn’t be out of line. Reluctantly, I submitted, though I couldn’t help thinking of the cost of an ambulance ride and a stay overnight in the hospital. I had no medical insurance, being self-employed.

As it turned out it was much more than a good call by the doctor. At around 5:30 a.m. the male nurse for the ward came in to take my vitals. He strapped on the blood pressure sleeve and told me to sit up on the side of the bed. I don’t remember whether I did sit up or only thought I did. I had the feeling of going through a soft white chamber and knowing that I was leaving my body. I knew it because the feeling counted as the single most beneficial feeling I would ever experience.

To attempt to explain what I felt, I can only compare it to having an enormous weight lifted from me, not simply physically but mentally, there is no drug experience I have read about or experienced that can compare with this feeling. There existed for me a certain clarity that allowed me to detach myself completely from the trauma of my own death and still know it was taking place before me. I would easily have continued in that existence knowing there was the most incredible comfort awaiting me if it were possible. I saw, or was aware of everything that was happening in the living world around me and accepted it as reality, I was above it and in it and understanding it in a way that is impossible to explain. Were I to have communicated with those I can remember observing, I knew I had answers they needed. Situations, problems they grappled with were known to me, and I would easily have explained to them the simple answers they needed. My own life situation was completely clear to me and the course of action I needed to pursue was crystal clear.

And just as quickly, I was drawn back to the real, living world, experiencing in reverse, the soft, white vacuum I needed to travel back through. The only thing left from the event was my knowledge that it really happened. The weight of needing to live and grind out the solutions for my problems was clearly back on my shoulders and the answers were not nearly as simple as I had felt for that brief period I was dead. I had no clue of those simple explanations. I was, and am, still aware that I did know exactly what I needed to do as clearly as I have related.

The experience alone would have been amazing enough, but there was more to come.

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The few people I did tell of my experience had very mixed reactions. Probably the most prevalent had to do with drugs I could have been given in the hospital. That may have been a valid point except for the fact that I specifically remember refusing the sleeping pill I was offered. I was so tired after the ordeal because of the pain and being free of it I went to sleep immediately. I had the nitro earlier but, to my knowledge there is nothing in the nitro that would cause me to hallucinate those events while my heart had stopped. There are a number of doctors who hold the opinion that the endorphin(s) released by the brain could cause the experience that many people have when their heart stops and they are legally dead for a period of time. The endorphins pave the way for death; sort of, the bodies defense against any serious pain associated with it.

However, while I certainly can’t prove it, I experienced the sensation of floating above my body as I was being worked on. I had already seen where each member of the crash cart team was when I came awake. If I had been aware I needed to prove anything I am positive I could have pointed out something I would only have seen if I was floating above my body. This phenomena has been experienced by a number of people who were able to point out an item atop a shelf which could be seen only if they were in a position to see it from above. But that is their experience, I can offer no such proof.

The experience I had is referred to as an OBE (out of body experience.) Supposedly, the spirit dis-attaches itself from the body and observes the death–one belief. Or, the spirit remains attached ( Shirley McClain’s silver chain) and observes the body, but feels no pain, until at a certain point when it must leave. Which raises the question of whether or not the body is alive once there is no spirit. I don’t know.

What I am prepared to say, still without proof, is that the spirit or aura if you need a more visual reference, occupies and then leaves the body when it no longer serves a function. What the aura’s purposes might be once it leaves is a function on a level which we are not yet privileged to know. How do I know this?

Actually, I don’t know for sure. But, it is something I have given a great deal of thought to since I had my own OBE. If so many people in every corner of the planet have had similar experiences there is no question, they do happen. The endorphin hypothesis explains much, but the floating outside the body in a position to see much more than what eyes can normally see, is not explained and cannot be discounted if so many can report experiencing it. Therefore I honestly believe what happened to me was not a near-death experience, it was a true -death experience.

That brings me to what I said in the beginning, for me the OBE was only the beginning.

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Here’s an incident that might serve as an explanation of what I mean. I have already mentioned I play golf, (played that is, until back problems forced me to quit a few years back.) After the aforementioned OBE, I was taken from Santa Rosa to Los Gatos’s Good Samaritan Hospital where I had a triple by-pass. During the recovery process I visualized being able to play golf again.

One of my biggest problems as a golfer (aside from a horrible temper) was my tendency to swing so fast going back, many people who watched me wondered how I could hit the ball at all. I gave this much thought during my recovery time, and decided to resolve that problem by swinging the club in a rhythm that allowed me to stay in balance.

I won’t go into the mechanics of the golf swing but the first time I played after recovering, was so pleasing to me it’s hard to relate. My swing rhythm allowed me to feel the entire swing from start to finish and stay completely in balance throughout. Needless to say I played the best round of golf of my entire life. I wish I could tell you that epiphany allowed me to play that way until I finally quit. But I can’t. The problem as you already might guess, is the epiphany didn’t include, not then anyway, my temper.

The other thing I must mention is that, at the time I didn’t make the connection between my OBE and my ability to control my swing tempo playing golf. I also know that the first time I played golf and allowed myself the stupidity to lose my temper over the game, I lost the ability to swing with that perfect tempo for a good long time.

Since that time a number of situations led me to discover that when I voluntarily give up the idea of forcing an answer for any physical deed, or to a mental problem, the answer to that problem will present itself to me within a very short period of time as will the ability to understand the physical requirements to accomplish a specific deed. Please don’t understand this to mean I can do things physically or mentally that are beyond what any human being should be able to do. I’m certainly not a super being in any sense of the imagination. But, what I’m able to verify is that when I struggle with myself for answers, or chastise myself for being too ignorant to understand a problem, the solution will not present itself for me.

I fully understand the theory behind this; when you try to force an answer to anything, you automatically work at cross purposes with your reasoning mind. Whereas, when you relax, you are far more likely to get the answers you seek. Relaxation opens the mind to receive the information or answers that are desired. Negative thinking produces negative results. Positive thinking insures the necessary mind-set to solve problems. It’s true , this technique has been around longer than I have, and I’m sure the vast majority practicing it didn’t need an OBE to prove its validity. My belief system before my OBE, however, was one of an absence of the metaphysical. Abstract thought was something I refused to consider. That has changed.

About seventeen years ago, I started self-teaching to become a writer. In reality I put the cart before the horse and decided to write a novel first. Anyone formally educated for this, simply laughs at what they know is an impossibility. Again, without going into the mechanics of writing, particularly a novel, it requires serious organization skills covering everything from disciplining one’s time, to researching locations and events, to character development, plotting, etc., etc. Unlike golf, which someone could expect to be a decent novice with a series of lessons and practicing a certain amount, writing is a task which must be continuously studied and expanded. But still, I forged ahead, blind as to basic writing techniques, and what one might call accepted structure.

After a year I had produced what I thought was a New York Times- Best seller. It would be kind to say, ‘not really.’ What I had, again being kind, was a collection of words, and way too many at that. After sending it to agents and editors and people who said they read it, I slowly caught on to the fact that my story was anything but unique, my style of writing was barely adequate for letter writing, let alone an entire novel. It was odd that I even stayed with the task, especially knowing I had a great deal of work ahead of me. I couldn’t by that time afford to get formal education, my life had taken a rather bad turn, but I could afford correspondence studies which I got from places like Writer’s Digest, both their magazine and article writing course, and their novel writing course.

I somehow managed to turn my collection of words into a passable novel. Each time I thought I might give up, my inner guide instructed me to step back and relax, enjoy what I had managed to accomplish. By allowing myself that pleasure, I was able to focus on the challenges I had overcome, and consequently, relax my mental state to prepare for the next test.

Somewhere along the line it dawned on me what my OBE did for me. I had always, before the experience, attempted to demand of myself things I wasn’t really ready for. I tried to force things, and as a result, I became prone to make mistakes and then blame myself for my lack of execution. I set myself up for failure. The harder I pressed for the answers the more elusive they became.

I finally have the balance in my life to see what my OBE was getting at for me. My inner guide was telling me it was okay to fail, but always allow myself the luxury of relaxing and starting the next challenge knowing I’m another step ahead of where I was. It wasn’t necessary to cloak myself in my failure, I now use those setbacks to advance myself. There is an enormous amount to be learned within an unsuccessful venture.

I was forty three years old when I had my OBE. I’m seventy three years old now.

I have the comfort and knowledge of knowing the last thirty years have been times of honest discovery for me, both in learning, and accepting my limitations. And the great thing is I know there’s still much more for me to learn.

After that is the Soft White Chamber.

D. Kenneth Ross