Marine Biologist Has 4 NDE's - "I Am Home"

0:03 From the time that they pronounced me that was a good 45 minutes They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart my heart stopped and I could see people screaming and crying But I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else The only thing that I could feel if you can imagine Absolute love and peace there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death everybody. We've got a great guest today, Ingrid Honkala.

0:44 No, Honkala. Is that better? Honkala. Honkala, okay. And I'm going to add the PhD on the end because you deserve some credit for that. So anyway, welcome to the show. This is going to be really interesting today. as we talk about your near -death experiences, plural, and especially all the things that you've learned from them. That's really what it's all about and what we're all here to do is to learn and grow. Before we jump into it, I'm going to give you one minute to tell a little bit about yourself so we can get to know you. So Ingrid, take it away. Thank you so much, Eric. Thank you for having me here with you, with your audience. Well, Ingrid, I am a person that, from a very, very young age, started to feel fascination for, like, knowing who we are. Because, yeah, my first near -death experience happened when I was very, very young.

1:43 But life brought me to be an explorer, an explorer of life, an explorer of the unknown. And I decided to take the path of science. the path of trying to understand things from the place of being not just a person wanting to know a spirit, but a person wanting to know how everything worked, where everything came from, what was the dynamics of it. My curiosity was such an intensity of me wanting to figure out and understand things. So yeah, I became a scientist. And I became a marine scientist, something that shocked people because they said to me, how could you have become a marine scientist if you drown? And he said he wouldn't say because drowning brought me to see the light. For me, life had been a combination of the outer and the inner. All right, well.

2:42 I'm glad you segued right into the beginning here, because I think we'll go chronologically. We'll start with your very first experience. And you were very young. You're only three years old. And one of the questions I want you to answer, because some people are going to have is, well, how do you remember something from when you were that young? But first, just tell us what happened. What was going on? I grew up in Bogota, Colombia. My parents work. They will leave us at the care of a maid. wouldn't pay attention to what we were doing when they were not at home. One day they left, my oldest sister, she was almost four, I was almost three. The two of us decided, let's go play in the patio. We phone a ball. And in the patio, there was a tank, a deep tank where we supposed not to play because we didn't know how to swim. But guess what, Eric, when they tell you not to do something, that's good. That's where you want to go. And then it was fun. We climbed the walls of the tank and she threw the ball. The idea was to play cash across the tank.

3:48 And then she threw a ball, didn't apply enough force. I thought I can grab the ball and I leaned forward to try to grab it. It rolled. I lost my balance and I fell in the tank. How deep? Something you couldn't stand up in? No, I couldn't. It was about 900 gallons of water. It was very deep. More than wide, it was deep. And it was just to store water and use that water back in the day for washing clothes. So I have never been in a pool. We didn't have a bathtub. So I didn't know that if you fall in the water, you drown. And this is the other thing, I was born high up in the Andes, so the water in that tank was frigid cold. It was early in the morning, so that water probably was about, I don't know, maybe 40, 30, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So when the first shock, more than anything, was the frigid water. Just right there, I felt that my breath was taken away. And then it was the horror.

4:59 the horror of why I cannot breathe. And right there, right at the back area, when people ask me, how can you remember? And I said, how can I forget if drowning is a horrifying experience? Imagine breathing, breathing is life. And you're trying to just fight for that air. And I'm in that moment of terror. And now how can I even forget what happened next? All these after that is, I like to name it because it's contrast after contrast after contrast. And the first contrast was going from that horror to peace, serenity, calmness. I didn't know what happened, Eric.

5:49 I just knew that now I didn't need to breathe. I didn't need to go out of the tank. I didn't need to go anywhere. And it fell in... incredibly amazing, the good. The next thing is that I was hearing my heart beating so hard in my chest. In that moment of horror, boom, boom, boom, boom. And the other contrast was so extreme because it went from all that noise in the head to silence. and I experienced what I call the silence behind the silence. It was so profound, so peaceful, so good that even after the experience I craved that silence and I craved it for the rest of my life. I would hide into closets under the bed, under the sheets, because I wanted that silence back. And I thought that that silence was like an outer silence, and it took me many years to understand that that was not something of the outer, but the inner. Now it comes the next contrast, and it was that the tank was a very dark space. It had a roof, it was early in the morning, and the last thing I saw when I drowned was darkness. And then... After that peace, that silence, that light. Now light is coming like from below and this light is able to illuminate the whole watery surrounding. And

7:22 then imagine it's the sense like now there is light. And then I started to see bubbles. And there was bubbles surrounded by light. And then imagine with the childlike spirit, I'm like, oh, bubbles. and I started to chase the bubbles and it was when I was chasing the bubbles that I turned around and I saw my body and my body was there floating in the water and this is the thing I did not feel scared I didn't even feel shocked it was just that oh that's my body and it feels the sense of familiarity like oh yeah that's my body and I have to tell you that the only thing that truly shocked me and that never went away from my mind was that the eyes were open and the eyes were like staring like nowhere.

8:13 You know how we say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul? These eyes felt like empty. Like if I was looking just like a costume and there was nothing, nothing there. And then it came the next contrast. I was born as a very sick child. I was born with respiratory problems and for almost those three years of life, I didn't know anything else than being sick. I didn't know how it felt to be otherwise. And when I am in this state of complete well -being, I look at that body and I'm like, I'm not going back there. And I made the conscious decision, I'm not going back into that body. And I turned around and I left the body behind. The moment I turn around, I started to see flowers. Flowers were blooming from nowhere. So now I'm like, wow, I'm mesmerized by these flowers. And then suddenly the flowers pick me up. So imagine even that sense of dimension, because who knows how big these flowers were. They pick me up, and now I am just floating in the flowers. And I'm being carried in a forward direction, and I'm just resting there. when in just a flash like that, I appeared floating above the maid. And I was in the room where she was listening to soap operas in the radio. And look, Eric, this is so sharp,

9:45 so clear in my mind that I can even remember the soap opera she was listening in the radio. If you ask a three -year -old, a two -year -old, oh what mom was listening or what a friend was listening in the radio when you were two years old, you think we're going to remember? I don't. But that I do. And years later I shared the information with my mom, with my family, and we were able to verify that that soap opera was playing during those days when I drowned. Wow. Do you remember specifically ever. And maybe you're getting to this. I'm sorry if I'm jumping ahead. Was there ever a time when you were given a choice? Do you want to go back or not? I mean, you've already made up your mind. You're going to stay and not go back to that body. Yes. And oh, and that, that will be later, not even in this experience, but later in my life. And in one of my, actually in my last near the experience, I was given the choice, but in the first one, neither the second one I was given the choice. I make at that moment my choice of like, I'm not going back. But it's clear that my soul had a different purpose and that I was going to come back. And you know, now that I am mentioning the mate and what I'm about to mention after the mate is clear that the decision was, I was coming back or I would not have gone and looked for help. So this is

11:18 incredible. Although my mind said, I'm not going back. My soul is, oh, no, you're coming back. So I went to look for help. When I went to the maid's room, I even pronounced her name. I said, Maria. That's Maria. But nothing happened. And in another blink, I appear floating above my mom. And then My mom, I have to tell you a little bit of backstory right there, a little bit. My mom had just got a new job. What is the sense when you've gotten a new job? Urgency. You're nervous. You're preparing for this new job. That's all you have in the mind. The mom and I appear floating above her and I said, oh, that's mom.

12:03 She stopped. Look at the difference with the maid. She stopped. And she knew something is happening at home with one of my babies. And that's when I had to bring the clarity of, look what love does. Look what the connection of unconditional love is doing here. Because when I went to meet the maid, there was really no connection with this person. So there was like nothing happened there. And my mom, who was blocks away from the place of the accident, at that moment knew and I have to say two things about her she had an amazing intuition and second she listened to that intuition and Eric she started to run back home and then I'm looking at her I wonder why mom is running at that moment at the end of the street I get distracted because I see a dog and I love animals the moment I feel the desire to be with the dog I am with the dog And just like, whoa. And then I saw a park, and I felt the desire to be in the park. I am in the park. And now I'm like, well, this is fun. And I started to play a game of going places. And while playing this game in another flash, I appear in a realm.

13:27 And it was a realm that was made of pure, intense, shiny white light. That was the first time that I felt I am home. I am home. Although I had seen my body, although all these things had happened prior this moment, I have really never asked who I was or wondered anything about me. You know, like I just was in the motion of being in the present having fun when I realized, whoa, I am not that. I am not that body. And it's when I realized myself as a being of light. And I started to feel the sense of connection, losing that sense of just individuality and started to feel connected with everything. And this is the part where people ask me, like when I was saying I saw flowers or I turned around and I did this and that, and how could you do that if you didn't have a body? And I said, that's amazing how when we... identify with the idea of a body, we still think we are that. So up to that moment, I did not even know what I was.

14:40 I never asked anything until I had this realization. And although I started to dissolve, I was still feeling the sense of self. But even that dissolve, I experienced what I describe or what I can understand or what I felt as nothing. Some people call it emptiness, some people call it non -self. And, you know, I could just tell you, Eric, that from all the experience, this is the part that probably is the most difficult to explain because I don't really think there's words to describe what I was experiencing at this point. But after many, many, many, many years of trying to use the way to explain what cannot be explained. I arrived to an analogy. People don't like to hear the word nothingness. That's kind of scary. But imagine that there is a huge stadium. And in the middle of the stadium, there's a little tiny box. And all I thought I was was that box. And suddenly the box opens up. and I said that is nothing because it's nothing that I thought I was, but at the same time is everything, is totality, is a sense of expansion. I just can say if I can find words to describe this state will be

16:11 the state of pure potentiality, state of pure presence and absolute consciousness. is being described in many philosophies. It could be a state if I could just mention an emotion, what some call nirvana or some call joy or just pure bliss. And when I am in this state, my mom finally arrived home and Eric, she knew exactly where to go. And she directed herself to the back of the house. She didn't waste time in any place and anywhere she went there. And my oldest sister, was trying to help me out. She didn't go say anything to the maid because we didn't supposed to play in this tank. So she looked at my mom and she said, Mom, Ingrid is there and I cannot get her. Came an incredible synchronicity. My mom worked with children and she had been trained to do CPR for children. My mom got me out. She just said that I would like a raggedy doll, no pulse, no breathing. completely pale blue lips and then she started to just do everything she knew and I was so disconnected from this reality that I didn't feel anything nothing at all and here comes the answer to your question nobody asked me anything I said that I was pushed because I felt like I had jumped from the tallest building in the world and there's nothing I could do to

17:43 stop it, but I resisted. I was like, no! And I'm being like sucked, like pulled back. And then I knew I was back in the body when imagine the sense of the expansive state of being back to the little box. Like whoop! And I am like feeling the sense of coldness and again the sense of the illness, the sense of that lack of freedom and oh I was so angry. I was so angry Eric and I did not want to be here. That mother's love is so powerful, isn't it? She was more powerful with that love bringing you back than you were wanting to stay, sounds like. Yes, oh yeah, I didn't. think at all that I was going to come back. That is so much for a three -year -old to process. I assume you couldn't process at all at that point. Did it just sort of happen over the years that you were able to, you know, not only remember these things, but you were talking about some very mature kind of feelings and topics here? Yes, it was very hard, very hard, especially now that you're mentioning that.

18:57 I came back with an awareness that I didn't have before. It was clear. You might say, oh, but she was just a little one. There was a before and after. I came back and I experienced my parents as like, I didn't feel them just like my parents. I have experienced a state of oneness. I felt them as my equal. And I became very rebellious. Why do I have to listen to these people? I also came back with awareness. I am not a child. I'm not a child. And I never felt like a child again. I look at other children and I was, what is happening to these people? They don't know anything. And I could not relate with them, even with many adults. It was so hard, Eric, to prove that actually this girl came with something that was different besides my attitude, besides what I was experiencing was that I am like, you know, I'm just about to be three years old. And now they started to see pretty quick how I was developing in an incredible fast rate, like I could read, I could write, I could develop mathematical problems, I could put together complex puzzles, I had a more complex language. Where all this came from? And then it was so fast that I even started to school early in my life and I learned so fast that In my mind, it was the clarity. I'm not learning

20:28 anything. I'm just remembering and just remembering. So it was very hard. It was moments where I stopped eating. I didn't even want to be touched. I didn't want to be here, period. And people ask me, but you should be grateful your mom brought you back. I mean, I was so little. You don't even have these concepts of being grateful or not or nothing. And then I come with another analogy. Imagine that you are a child and they take you to the most amazing amusement park. You go to your dream place, Disney, and suddenly a few hours later, oh, we have to go home. I don't want to go. What are you talking about? Quick shout out here to our favorite returning sponsor, One Skin. They have me hooked on their skin products and now I'm giving their OS1 hair a try. It's the same science. now in a scalp serum, and it's scientifically proven to increase hair thickness and density all while reducing hair loss. Whether it's stress, hormonal shifts, or just getting older, hair changes can happen to everyone, men and women.

21:44 OneSkins OS1 hair is powered by the OS1 peptide to actually work on the scalp where hair health begins to nourish the root so your hair looks and feels better over time. I just started using it and if it works half as well as their skincare, I'm gonna love it, you're gonna love it, and of course we have a deal for our listeners. Born from over 10 years of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is engineered to support your hair to look visibly fuller and thicker at any age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15 % off using code roundtrip at oneskin .co forward slash I didn't want to be here and I could not fit in. I felt like I was like an alien. It was very hard and imagine like you mentioned I was so little I didn't have the language. to express what was happening. And there was not just the barrier of the language. But back then, early 70s, nobody knew anything where I was about near -death experience. And nobody knew anything about this. So it even made it harder, thankfully.

23:11 For me, it didn't end there. Right after my near -death experience, I... continue having experiences like what I call a or what is known today as our body experiences which I understand clearly just as shifts in a state of consciousness where I kept accessing that realm of the light and in these journeys I started to communicate with described by back then as beings of light. And that connection was the one that made things possible for me. Say that the possibility that I was able to calm down and continue my life with more, let's say with the possibility to adapt better just because of this connection.

24:04 So yeah, it wasn't easy. And yeah, it took many, many, many years, Eric, to integrate the experiences. Because after that came all these other spiritual experiences and a second ND and to understand what was happening and from where all this was coming from. So I think it probably, it wasn't until my late 40s that I had what I call a big awakening. We're going to come back to that if we have time. One of the things that really stood out to me, and I know it didn't seem like a big deal. But it's unusual and that is how much you craved silence after this Especially as a child.

24:48 That's an unusual thing I think it's really cool and really interesting and you don't have to have any more answers than that I just am kind of pondering on that interesting fact All right that that's amazing and in all of these experiences change people Even a three -year -old can be changed and you were changed in some big ways and different than the other kids in some very big ways. All right. Let's fast forward. Let's go to when you were 24 years old, when you had experience number two, and there's a great big gap between these, but let's talk about the next NDE and then we'll see if we need to make some kind of connection between the two. Yes. Perfect.

25:33 Yeah, by then I was already working as a marine biologist. I was living in an island in the Caribbean and I got my first motorcycle and I was nervous and happy to have it and a friend asked me to bring him to his house in the mountains. I was very nervous too. driving the mountains and look what fear does. The fear of not knowing what you're doing. I was, I guess, in a moment of blinding fear that I don't even know what happened. The moment we were going up the hill and I had a friend sitting, the friend that wanted me to bring him to his house, he was sitting at the back, that I lost my balance. I don't know what happened, but the bike fell. And it just, when he was asking for changing gears, something happened, the bike fell. And I know that the next thing I know, I'm standing in the middle of the road and I'm in the presence of the light. And the light is shining so bright. And you know, the most amazing thing was again, going back. from fear. Look, in the first one was drowning, in this one was the bye to peace and calmness. That's the thing that I would just say maybe shocked me the most or I can keep in my mind as the most clear thing the lack of fear. None of that was there, no negative emotion, only again, peace

27:06 and quiet and stillness and calmness. And again, the sense of like, I'm ready to go home. And I was completely ready when I was picked at the scene of the accident. That's when the fear came back because somebody touched my body and I just wonder why I cannot feel, why I cannot see this person that is. someone is touching me and I cannot see this person. And I touched my face and I realized that I could not see my physical eyes. I had a very, very bad head trauma and I had lost my vision. I was taken to the hospital.

27:47 At the hospital, just inflammation started to go down and I started to recover my vision. But right there with the doctor and my friend in the recovery room, the doctor said that I had to lose my vision when I fell the moment my head hit the ground because I didn't have a helmet. Oh, my God. Crazy girl. And then I said, I don't think so, because I was standing in the middle of the road and I was seeing light. I thought, yeah, I'm seeing. And then my friend said, no, Ingrid, it's not possible because it was at night and the road was pitch black. There was not street lights. You could not have seen any light. And he said, by the way, you never stood up. So it's when I realized... I get it. I didn't see the light with the eyes of my physical body. Look, the physical eyes were not even there. I was seeing with the eyes of my soul. So it was that clarity of light. It's when I started to understand with more clarity about the inner senses, what I call the senses of the soul. And then this is the other thing. This experience was so key later in my life when people ask me if their loved ones suffer. when they die in accidents that are terrible accidents like this. And I said, no, no, there's no physical pain. Emotional pain might be different, but physical pain? I

29:19 said, the pain belongs to the nervous system. The moment that you're out of the body, no pain. Even before the bike fell, I was already out. I never felt any pain whatsoever. So it was that reassuring sense of like, yeah, there's no physical pain. And the other incredible thing that I experienced there was when I came back in the body, the connection between the soul and the nervous system, like almost like a spark. I don't know how to explain this. Imagine that you have a toaster and without being plugged to the electricity, it cannot do anything. And the moment you plug it, you hear the spark of connection with. the electricity and now it has a function. So I experienced that how we came here to experience through all these bodies, through all these senses, through these nervous systems. So it was incredible. And at that moment I have become a little bit busy with my career, a little bit out of focus from all this spiritual thing. And it was kind of like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you need to come back.

30:32 You need to come back to alignment. Go back and look within to brought me back to that silence again. Okay. Wow. It's beautiful stuff. I want to go ahead and jump up to, to the latest experience. There was another one in between that, that you were telling me earlier, you don't really remember very much of. So let's jump to an experience just what three years ago? Yes. Three years ago, I, uh, I was. I was diagnosed with, what is the name of this? I had very severe inflammation. Eric, I cannot even remember the name of this condition, but I needed surgery. At that moment, I was avoiding surgery because I just thought I could heal with just traditional things or just medicine. I was just thinking, I don't need this surgery. I decided just to walk away from that. And one night I went to sleep and I was feeling the sense of dread, the feeling of deep anguish, the feeling of, I don't know what is happening. And I am a very empathic person. So I just thought maybe I'm feeling somebody else's stress or somebody else's feelings. And every time I mentioned these, these feelings go away.

31:56 That moment, I kept feeling so worried. I went to sleep. I just slept for a couple of hours, woke up again. And the worry was such that I felt that I had tachycardia when I woke up. I went into deep, like a state of breathing, calmness. I already practiced all these different techniques. And then it's when I heard the words, do you trust me? And when I heard the words, do you trust me? I wanted to peace the moment I say, I do. Yes, I do. And then the rest of the night I was in a state of deep, deep, deep connection. And I even heard the words that said, you are in sync with God. Next day, I got up and I was in that state of deep, deep, deep connection.

32:46 And now remembering these words, five days after this experience, I was in a horrendous car accident. And in the car accident, the seat belt pressure so hard, my chest and my abdomen, the surgery that I didn't want to have had to happen. Pretty much life was pushing me to have the surgery. I guess it was to have the experience I was about to happen. Prior to the surgery, I told the doctor that something was going to happen. I already knew, Eric, I had. the knowing. I said, something is going to happen with my blood pressure. And I told the doctor repeatedly, something you have to monitor my blood pressure. And then she called anesthesiologist and everything because I was so adamant. And then she listened to what I had to say. And during the surgery, they were just their check -ins when my blood pressure went to the ground and I went into hypothermia. And the moment this happened, I immediately went to the light. I just have to say, and I don't know if you hear it from other, near -their -experiencers, it was like, cut with the chase. You don't have to go experience any other thing, so go here to see that, go directly to the light. And now I'm answering a question you asked me at the beginning. If I ever heard, it's not your time, or if I was given a choice, this is the first

34:17 time. that I heard if I wanted to stay or I wanted to come back. And when I heard if I wanted to stay, wow, my first answer was, of course I want to stay. Since my very first near -death experience, I always wanted to go back home. I was homesick all my life. And that's why this experience was so important, Eric. It closed a cycle. of depression I had had all my life because I always felt I want to go back home. And I felt kind of bad to tell the story to my family because I felt so detached. And this is beautiful because the detachment is no lack of love. The detachment is because you are in complete connection with everything and everyone. So when I am there, I'm like knowing that God's plan is perfect.

35:16 And there's nothing I have to change or fix. And then I heard, oh, you want to go back. And at that moment I say, wait a minute, is this a test? Because if God is everywhere and absolutely everything is a manifestation of consciousness. So what is here and what is there? I said, oh, I get it. There is no here and there is not there. There is only consciousness. Where I am in my state of consciousness. And it's when I realize I get it. Home is not a place. It's a state of being. And then the only thing that crossed my mind was to say, keep me where I can serve God the most. And the moment I said those words, give me where I can serve you the most. I started to feel the sense of how detached I was now.

36:18 I was like, oh, my son, my husband, my family, my purpose. I needed something that anchored me back. And all that pulled me back here. And it's when I realized, Eric, I get it. It's not about near dead. It's about near life. how I can live my life to the fullest, how I can use the whole of everything to remember who I am truly and continue just living a life in presence and love and connection. And yeah, in challenge too, by understanding that all these challenges are for my own growth and evolution. So now that you've had that side of the experience where it was more of your choice and you realized the whys behind it, Do you still feel that longing, that homesickness that you had before? No, it completely closed that cycle. It was the absolute clarity. And you know, I even had a vision of say that you're sitting here and you put in yourself some virtual reality goggles and you put the goggles and you just go up and down and here and there. And you feel that you've been experiencing all these and you remove the goggles and you realize I never went anywhere. I've always have been here. I've always have been home. I just thought that I was going somewhere else, doing this, being there. And now my connection with the divine, my connection with spirit, my wholeness,

37:53 my expanded state of being is in me. I am the whole of it. So I don't have to go anywhere and I can even feel this now. I don't need to be here or there to feel that I belong. I belong because I am the scent. How much fear of death do you have now? Zero. Zero, Eric. And you know, you can even ask me and it happened since I was little, not even with the very first near that experience. And one thing is to know And one thing is to believe that you don't. And I had the possibility to experience firsthand that what I was feeling was real because I have had experiences in which for other reasons, I faced situations of deep, deep danger, deep danger where my life was like about to be taken once I was almost raped and murdered. And the moment that I remember who I truly was and the moment I was in a beach area, I turned my head and I said, today's a good day to die. And I was in this space of complete presence and I knew you can kill or you can destroy this body all you want, but you cannot destroy me. Well, there's something we don't hear every day. It's a good day to die. That's really different. Now, when you were a child, were you also lacking that fear of death? Yes, to the point that my parents

39:26 had to keep an eye on me because I didn't fear anything. And that brought me to have actually the possibility to do so many things, travel the world. I've been in 65 countries of the world, be here and there, do extreme things, sports, anything, because I never had this incredible house to live alive. without the fear of that you're more daring. You're able to do just many things because you know really you are an eternal being that doesn't really exist. So I always knew you can take this body but you cannot destroy who I am. Yeah I like that a lot. Do you have any advice for parents out there who maybe have a child that has been through an experience like this? Your child is now different. Okay, parent, mom or dad, how do I not only deal with this, but best nurture this child after what they've been through? It's very important. And I have had the possibility to talk to parents and to talk to children. And incredibly, I met like in my experience, the children were nervous.

40:35 They didn't want to talk. They were scared because what is that? You need validation. The most important thing, just listen. listen to what they have to say. I think for me, in my own experience, my mom became the greatest thing. My mom was the first person validating what I was seeing and I was experiencing was something she had to listen to. She had to connect with me there. And after that, my grandmother, she became my spiritual teacher. So I think the most important thing is to listen. to don't go on and just right off the bat denying what they're saying or you're seeing things or you're crazy or whatever, because that immediately is going to cause a sense of pain and suffering and is when things are going to go very, very wrong for the child. But the moment that you feel that you're being listened just by, you know, the power of listening has so much healing. in it so just listen with an open mind and an open heart that's already the route of healing. Last thing that I wanted to get into for a minute is as someone who grew up with these spiritual type experiences and then you became a scientist and we tend to think that those things are at odds with each other that there's no congruency. How did you balance all of that in your own mind? Well, you know, and right before going to that answer, just because

42:07 we're going to talk about science, I would also tell the parents to be informed, to be informed, to study, to learn what is happening, not just be reactive and I don't understand what it is, just study, learn. Nowadays, there are many things that are available for everybody to be able to understand things deeper. And yeah, my path of science is that this is so interesting because, you know, for me, I would just say that science and spirituality, people feel the sense that they are the world, that they are divided. And I say the separation is in the mind. Because the most important thing is also to refrain the idea of what is to be spiritual. To be spiritual is to remember. your authentic self to go back to the root of who you are and to be able to go back and explore and see and remember who you are. You have to be an observer. You have to be curious. You have to ask questions. You have to have curiosity. You have to go look for answers. And that's the path of science too.

43:22 So I just say that in reality, spirituality is science. If I come to you, Eric, and I said, look, and there's a sky, all this is full of clouds. And I said, Eric, beyond those clouds, there's a blue sky. If you choose to believe me, just to believe me, that is dogma without any other way of proving that, that's dogma. But in the moment that you say, you start by, yeah, I believe, but... Let's go on and let's ask the real, is there really a blue sky there? I want to go see it. So you start with your hypothesis, is there is a blue sky or not? And after that you get your airplane, however you get it, you build it, you get it, and you cross those clouds and you see there's really a blue sky here. then now you get your results. You're able to compare.

44:20 You come back here and you share all these results and your conclusions and everything with the people. So look at the end of the day, you need to do the work. You need to have curiosity. You need to have observation. You need to have results. So I said, I could offer you the best meditation in the world, but if you never practice it, you will never know what it does for you. See? So at the end of the day, you have to go through all the experience. At the end of the day, you have to become the observer of yourself. There was a moment that I asked the universe, how can I do to understand and unravel the mysteries of the universe? I asked for nothing. And the answer was to understand and unravel the mysteries of the universe. Know thyself. And we can be very curious without being skeptical. Exactly.

45:16 And everything, yeah, of course, because everything starts with that, like that question. And there is choice in our belief. How does that relate to somebody who might be saying today, I don't know if there's an afterlife. I don't know if there is a God. Does it fit the same formula? I just say that everyone is having. their own experience and we have to go through everything. Sometimes we have to go through the path of like peeling layers of what we are not until we discover what we are. The only way to know what you are is by knowing what you are not. So you peel all these layers, all these layers until you just get to the core of what you are and sometimes we have to go through doubt and sometimes we have to go through disbelief and sometimes we have to go through all these things and life, only life and your own experience because I can tell you and I can try to convince you all I want and that's not going to work. The only thing I could do is share my experience and everybody else will do. their own experience. How many near -their -experiencers were atheists and say, I didn't believe in anything. I've talked to many. I will shake you hard. And you're like, oh, people that it doesn't even have to be a near -their -experience, an experience of such extreme moment that people that never believe

46:48 in God would just go and say, please God help me. And it happens. It's the moment in which you open yourself to what was hidden. It is always that knowing inside ourselves there's more than this outer reality. Beautiful stuff Ingrid. And if people want to learn more about you, we've got ingridhankala .com. I'll put it down on the show notes and go ahead and mention your couple of books that you've written too. Yes, yes, yes. I've written a few books, two for adults, two for children. My first book is an autobiography, A Brightly Guided Life, how a scientist learns to hear her inner wisdom. And my second book is Dying to See the Light, a guide to reawakening without nearly dying. So it's more like a guide to... bring people to realize you don't have to die because people ask me I would like to die and like no you don't want to die but you can do all these things instead so it's a guide and it's a guide for that for questioning for looking within for looking for answers for curiosity so that's that book and then I have two books just for children so children kind of start asking those questions yeah I think encouraging the questions is a good thing I'm going to give you the last word here. This show is not about death.

48:15 It's about hope and it's about life and it's about love. Leave us some kind of a message of hope because we're living in a world right now that, wow, there's not a lot of it. There's just bad news everywhere. Leave us with some hope today. You know, this is a message I received from what I call being so light, and it's a really beautiful message they sent to me. Ingrid, you don't imagine how grateful everyone would be if you realize that for you to exist, trillions and trillions and trillions of subatomic particles have to be in agreement. You are divine. You are a divine being. Look at these subatomic particles could have chosen be anything else and they decided to be you and I see it with everything and nowadays I see wow these spend trillions and trillions of subatomic particles keep it together to be this pen so I can use it and at the same time it was created by the creative thinking of the universe someone that was connected with creativity so I tried to see things with those eyes what can I do to be the peace I want to see in the world. What can I do to be the joy I want to see in the world, the love I want to see in the world? So I do not lose myself in what is happening

49:48 out there. The beings of light also say to me, do not worry for what others do. Not because you don't care, but because you care so much that you correct yourself first. So be the light that you want to see in the world. Be that. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath .com. If you want to share your near -death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to eric at roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.