• Experiences over beliefs: Sharing two Near death experiences
    By The Contemplative Bard
    October 31, 2025

    In the journey of faith, I've come to treat doctrines not as final answers, but as hypotheses - ideas to be tested, lived, and either affirmed or discarded. Beliefs, no matter how ancient or revered, are not ends in themselves. They are starting points. To accept them blindly is to halt the search for truth. But to test them and to walk into the wilderness of experience is to allow truth to reveal itself.

    This Halloween, I share two of my near-death experiences. Not to entertain, but to reflect. Each one challenged a different belief system. Each one offered a glimpse beyond the veil.

    The first story affirms a long-held hypothesis: that angelic beings exist. Not as metaphors or symbols, but as real presences. I've encountered them more than once - sometimes even in visual form. In this particular moment, their intervention was unmistakable.

    The second story is humorous, surreal, and deeply unsettling as it confronts the materialist notion that consciousness is confined to the body. I've had many such experiences, but this one stands out for its strange clarity. It also challenges a theological assumption that the soul cannot separate from the body except in death. My experience suggests otherwise.

    In college, I was nearly drawn into a movement that demanded allegiance to Marxist materialism due to my advocacy for the Catholic social teachings. But I couldn't accept a worldview that denied the soul, not after my experiences since childhood. Many of my peers, grounded only in belief and not experience, were swept away. But I had already seen too much. Felt too much. Left my body and returned.

    If there is a soul, then perhaps there is a greater Soul. that what we call "G-d".

    And if we are to know Him, it must be through encounter, not just creed.

    Ledge of shadows: A Halloween Tale of Survival

    I was hiking with my best friend in the misty folds of the Bat'ad mountain range in Asia during the late 90s, where the trails twist like serpents and the cliffs whisper ancient secrets. On our way back from the Bat'ad terraces and the majestic Tappiyah Falls, the sun had barely dipped below the horizon. We were in a hurry to beat the darkness.

    A mysterious group of teenagers appeared on the trail ahead. We followed them instinctively and then, just as suddenly, they vanished.

    That's when I realized we were on a downward slope. My foot slipped. A careless step on mossy, damp stone. I tumbled helplessly down the incline, the world spinning in a blur of rock and sky.

    Then, as if the mountain itself took pity on me, a narrow ledge, that is no wider than a school desk, caught my fall. It held me, half-suspended, my back pressed against its cold surface, my legs dangling over a yawning ravine. One twitch, one breath too deep, and I'd have vanished into the abyss.

    A few minutes later, my friend fell on top of me. It was painful... but thank God, it didn't break my ribs.

    Night crept in. We were terrified. Even if the ledge held, the temperature would soon drop to a biting +5°C, and as was common in that place, rain would begin to fall like needles. We wore only cotton shirts. If hypothermia set in, we were done! Worse still, the area was known for cobras... silent, slithering, and deadly.

    We began confessing our past sins, resigned to our fate. We surrendered, and we prayed.

    Then, out of the darkness, a figure emerged. A native Ifugao man, dressed simply, walking as if guided by something beyond this world. He didn't speak much. He just reached out, pulled us to safety, and walked us back to the trail.

    When I turned to thank him, he was gone.

    No footprints. No rustling leaves. Just silence.

    Was he real? A wandering soul? An angel in human form?

    I'll never know. But we survived. And every Halloween, I remember that ledge, and the stranger who saved us from it.

    This was a near-death experience in the truest sense. The next one might be what you expect a near-death experience to be...but not quite.

    The Man in the Bathroom: A Halloween Tale of the Second Kind

    It was late, and that kind of late where silence feels heavier than sleep. That was early 2000s. I came home, exhausted, and collapsed into bed. But before drifting off, I felt the familiar call of nature. I needed to pee.

    I got up, walked to the bathroom, and then… nothing.

    The next thing I remember, I was back in my bedroom. But something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

    I lay down, but I couldn't feel my body. Not in the usual way. I looked around, confused. Where was I? More importantly, where was my body? It was really a weird feeling.

    There was no tunnel of light. No angelic choir. No Dr. Moody-style transcendence. Just me, floating around my room like a confused ghost, wondering why I hadn't used the door to get back in.

    I tried the knob. It didn't work. So I just… phased through it.

    I wandered the house, searching for myself. I wasn't in bed. Not on the couch. Not in the kitchen. Then I checked the bathroom.

    There was a man slumped on the floor. His head was bleeding.

    I panicked. Had someone broken in? Was he dead? Who could’ve done this?

    I crept closer, heart pounding, ready to check his pulse... not out of bravery, but out of fear that I'd be blamed for his murder.

    And then I saw his face.

    It was mine.

    That moment hit like a thunderclap. I wasn't looking at a stranger. I was looking at me. The man with the bleeding head was me.

    Before I could scream, I felt myself being pulled, but no, it was more like being absorbed into something cold and heavy. Like wet clay. Like metal. Like a body that had forgotten how to be alive.

    That was the feeling that struck me the most; not the ghostly wandering, but the moment I felt my body as nothing more than a lump of cold, wet clay. In that instant, I understood how fragile and fleeting human life truly is.

    Then, slowly, warmth returned. My fingers twitched. My chest rose. Pain bloomed in my skull like a firework.

    I was back.

    Later, I got stitches in the ER of my university’s hospital. But I never got answers. Did I die? Did I faint? Was it a dream, a hallucination, or something else?

    All I know is that I met myself in the bathroom. And for a moment, I wasn't sure which one of us was real.

    Final Reflection

    This Halloween, I'm sharing two of my near-death experiences: One on a mountain ledge, and the other in my own bathroom.

    These are just two of many moments that taught me:

    We don't find truth by clinging to beliefs. We find it by experiencing and surviving them.


    Thanks be to the Lord Christ!



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