Neuroscientist Anna Stone claims she died for six minutes and what she saw during her out-of-body experience transformed her life forever.
In 2016, Dr. Anna Lee Stone was a 38-year-old mother of two, working multiple contracts, including one with the U.S. Department of Defense.
“I was in a neural engineering lab, it was pretty boring despite the fancy contracts,” Stone said on the Next Level Soul podcast. “I was a scientist so I thought in very scientific black and white terms of how things are and how they aren’t – by what we can prove with scientific testing and instrumentation. everything was black and white in my world.”
Despite her success, Stone was stuck in a downward spiral that she now calls “a nightmare.”
The California woman was married to someone she “barely knew,” drinking heavily and doing drugs, and couldn’t keep her career on track and was “falling apart.”
“I was really bitter and angry and very selfish, self centered, all about me and my problems,” she told the Daily Mail. She adds that she saw herself as “a loser,” and carried her childhood trauma around like a “badge of honor.”
The trauma, she claims, was so severe that her therapist said, “I can’t believe you are still alive.”
Stone was diagnosed with multiple conditions including bipolar disorder and given different medications – none that helped her.
Clinically dead
But then, one day when her monthly menstrual cycle “just didn’t stop,” her body hit a literal pause.
“I kind of made a joke and I said, ‘I think I’m bleeding to death,’ And that’s the last thing I remember saying before I woke up in an ambulance,” Stone recalled. “The next thing I’m in a hospital bed. I had this feeling come over me that I can only describe, is that I knew I was dying.”
The former research scientist claimed the sudden medical emergency left her clinically dead for six minutes, a feeling she described as “like taking every hallucinogenic drug all at once.”
“It felt like I was going to explode. It’s too much. I couldn’t handle it. Then suddenly I popped out of my body,” Stone explained, adding that she watched the doctors try – then stop – resuscitating her.
‘Former junkie’
Describing her experience, Stone shared that, in a blink, she was 210 miles away in her daughter Ashley’s college classroom, watching her take an exam. She even noted her outfit, details that were confirmed later. Then came her youngest child, just two years old, who was playing with Legos in the hospital waiting room.
When she returned to the room where doctors were giving her chest compressions, she saw the technicians pulling back.
“Let’s call it,” a doctor reportedly said, leading to a technician asking, “What, already? She is only 38.”
“She’s a former junkie, just call it,” the doctor insisted.
“I remember thinking, ‘Was that necessary?’” Stone said of the moment before she floated above the chaos.
Floating
Next, Stone said entered a white, radiant realm where she had a 360-degree vision of the universe, making her feel like she could hug the planet.
“I could have wrapped my arms around the entire planet if I wanted to,” Stone explained.
As she was drifting in the unknown realm, she claims she saw a figure approach – a different version of herself that was prettier, lighter, ageless.
She knew she was “going back,” and she re-entered her body through her belly button, she recounted “hurt like absolute hell.”
‘Audible gasps’
When she regained consciousness, she told the host of the podcast that she was still hooked up to the machine.”
“Everyone’s back was turned to me…and I just shot up so there were no warning beeps to let them know I was coming back. And I came back and scared the crap out of at least one guy,” she shared, adding there were “loud audible gasps.”
As she was waking, she said she felt like her head was underwater, “because for six minutes, I had no oxygen, so I was coming out of that and taking my first breath.”
As soon as she caught her breath, she claimed she then looked at the doctor and looking for confirmation, she asked: “did you say I was a former junkie?”
The doctor at first only looked at her.
“It could have been neurons misfiring,” she admitted to thinking when he delayed his response.
And after saying “there is no way you could have heard that, you were clinically dead,” he finally admitted he had called her a “junkie,” and apologized.
Scientific skeptic meets spiritual awakening
Before this experience, Anna was the kind of scientist who scoffed at spirituality as her “black-and-white” belief system left no room for the soul.
But after her near death experience (NDE), her worldview exploded.
The Daily Mail reports that the mother now believes that God is “definitely not a person, and time is definitely not linear. Everything is happening now.”
Since her out-of-body experience, Stone finished her undergraduate degree, then a Master’s, and cleaned up her life.
She kicked her addictions, left her toxic relationships and in addition to being the greatest mother, her life mission now is to empower trauma survivors by helping them heal.
“I’ve been helping other people with trauma backgrounds, I can help other people. I had previously been an alcoholic, I would get home and drink 12 beers: now I can’t touch alcohol at all.”
Anna Stone’s story isn’t just about death. It’s about life and how sometimes, hitting rock bottom might just be the trampoline we need to bounce into something extraordinary.
What are your thoughts on the afterlife? Please let us know what you think and then share this story with others so we can get the conversation started!
