What if time isn’t real, multiple timelines exist simultaneously, and your consciousness can leave your body? In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Nancy Rynes (scientist, geologist, archaeologist, artist, inspirational speaker, and author of Awakenings from the Light: 12 Life Lessons from a Near Death Experience) reveals the unbelievable story of her near death experience (NDE) and the profound revelations that changed everything she believed about life, death, consciousness, and what happens after we die.After being hit by a car while riding her bike, Nancy describes watching the accident from outside her body, experiencing a split in consciousness between her ordinary “ego” awareness and what she calls her higher self, and encountering a mysterious woman who helped her at the scene, yet has never been identified to this day.During surgery, Nancy says she awakened somewhere completely unlike the physical world: a beautiful, ethereal hillside filled with tendrils of pulsating energy. But it wasn't a physical place at all. Nancy came to understand it as a kind of “construct.” As an atheist, her first question upon realizing she may have died was why wasn’t she in hell?Then came her encounter with a spirit guide, who told Nancy she had to return to “earth school”, something she desperately did not want to do.Nancy remembers an agreement she believes she made before birth: a “soul contract” that included being born into her particular family and undergoing specific personal transformations in order to fulfill her soul’s purpose. She also shares the 12 life lessons she says emerged from her NDE, including her profound belief that “God is love” and completely all-encompassing and all-inclusive, and that we are never truly alone.She explains why she believes energy levels may be the only thing separating our reality from the other realm, and recounts a powerful life review in which she experienced how her actions had positively or negatively affected other people. Her experience gave her a radically different perspective on the enormous impact of seemingly insignificant choices, including small, random acts of kindness that may affect someone far more deeply than we realize.Nancy also opens up about what happened after she returned to her body: the physical and emotional recovery, the struggle to readjust to ordinary reality, and the depression she experienced because she desperately wanted to return to the spirit realm she had experienced. At the same time, she discovered new creative abilities and gifts that she hadn't experienced before.Nancy describes remembering two of her friends dying before her NDE—only to discover that both friends were still alive when she returned. This bizarre experience became part of why she believes different timelines can exist at the same time and why she now views time as an illusion.Her experiences may have challenged everything she once believed, but Nancy wasn't always spiritually open. As a small child, she was deeply spiritual and believes she may have experienced an earlier NDE at age 4, which may have her for remote viewing later in life. Raised Catholic, she nevertheless questioned and rejected many of the teachings she was exposed to. As an adult, her science-minded brain—shaped by her work as a geologist and archaeologist—made her especially skeptical. She also carried a powerful fear of death.Yet before her life-changing accident, Nancy says she began experiencing strange dreams and an unmistakable feeling that something was about to happen.Was her childhood experience a preview of what was to come? Did her consciousness actually separate from her body? Who was the mysterious woman at the accident scene? What exactly is “earth school”? Could a soul contract really exist? And if Nancy’s memories of her friends suggest that multiple timelines can coexist, what does that mean for our understanding of time, consciousness, and reality?This is a fascinating deep dive into NDEs, consciousness, the afterlife, higher self, spirit guides, soul contracts, life reviews, remote viewing, spirituality, timelines, and the mystery of what happens when we die!

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