Amy Call's Near-Death Experience: Finding Order in Chaos

The Weight of the World

Amy grew up in a large family of six children, raised with very strong beliefs in religion and politics. Everything was definitive, black and white, this is how it is. But at four years old, she overheard her mother talking about cancer down the hallway. She didn't understand what cancer was, but she sensed in her mother's tone that something wasn't okay. When she asked, her mother had to explain that sometimes people have cancer, sometimes bad things happen, sometimes God lets people suffer and die.

The child's response was immediate and logical: if there's a God and he's all-powerful, can't we just pray and have him fix it? Her mother said well, sometimes people aren't fixed, you know, sometimes God lets people suffer and die and sometimes it doesn't work out the way that we might want it to.

That was my first understanding that there is suffering in the world, Amy explains. Before that moment, she was so little she didn't realize suffering existed. The revelation sent her into a spiral. She became ultra-aware of pain everywhere, a magnet to it. And she had always been sensitive, an empath before she knew the word existed. I had a difficult time separating myself from others, and it wasn't just people, it was animals, plants, everything that was, I felt very connected always.

When she heard on the news that children in Africa were suffering, she couldn't understand why everyone else wasn't curled up on the floor crying. To me, when I heard this is happening to the little girls there, you might as well have told me my child, my own daughter, is going through this, that's how I felt it. She felt bombarded, devastated, confused. Why weren't other people responding the same way? They'd go out to parties, laughing, and she'd think: didn't you hear that someone was just kidnapped?

At age four, I told my dad, if things are like this, I don't want to be here, I can't handle it, I can't be in this place where there's this much suffering and it looks like God's not fixing it. She became attracted to the idea of dying. But at the same time, a new fear crept in: if there's a God who could allow this to happen, why would I be excited to go there, to be with this person who had remote control to our lives and who could favor that person and then hurt that person?

She was in between, neither here nor there.

The Breaking Point

Her mother was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Her grandmother had ankylosing spondylitis. Amy was especially close to her grandmother, went to her home for refuge, and it was very hard to hear her crying, to go with her to the chiropractor and overhear her suffering. I was constantly praying, I was constantly asking God, please, please, please, once they prove that they're good, can you just please bless them and let them be free of their suffering and pain.

At 16, her parents sent her to a psychiatrist. She had this fantasy that a wise man with a long beard would have the answers, would explain everything, and she would finally get it. Instead, he just handed me a worksheet. Are you sometimes very happy? Are you sometimes very sad? Have you ever wanted to die? Yes, yes, yes. He came back in the room and kind of skimmed over it and said, sounds like you're bipolar. She left with prescriptions for very heavy medication.

The medication made her feel disconnected, like she couldn't even care as much as she did before. She lost her passion for some of the things that were beautiful and good. At 17, I woke up one morning and I felt that I couldn't breathe, and my whole body felt pulverized, it was like I had been in an accident. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. More pain meds. At 18, after struggling to stop the medications and being told she needed them, she hit a wall. I took every pill that I could find, in just kind of a fast, I'm not even thinking way, it was almost animalistic. She survived.

At 21, she did what she was supposed to do: got married, started having children, tried to follow the list. She wanted desperately for a change to happen. When I was very small, I had started to pray a prayer that I repeated all the time: please let me be a tool in thy hands. She wanted so badly to help with the suffering because she really did feel one with it.

She had four children. But things got worse. I got to the point where I was crawling on the floor instead of walking at times because it was so painful. Holding her babies hurt too much. She couldn't nurse as much as she wanted. And the sleep, the sleep was the worst. The pain was so intense and the muscle spasms I was having were so intense that at nighttime I got to where I would sleep for 15 minutes and then I would have to wake up and massage everything to go back to sleep. Every 15 minutes. Her brain was shutting down. I could feel my brain was just going, I can't do this, it was like I would be awake but my brain was like I got to go to sleep.

She kept praying. Please don't let this happen. I'm praying and praying. I finally hit this point, another milestone in this journey, where I couldn't pray anymore, it was too painful to pray and to have it continue to get worse. One day she just kind of hit the floor, landed on her knees. What came was simple: I know nothing, I don't know anything anymore, I kind of just released everything I thought I knew. All the things she believed in, this and that, there was nothing anymore in her mind. I said to God, I surrender, I don't know anything, and I let it all go.

Three Pills

Shortly after, her doctor gave her something new. It's not typically used for sleep or pain, but we found by accident that it seems to help both, and I want you to try this. She was nervous. Every medication they'd ever given her had caused problems, then they'd given her medications for those problems, then medications for the problems of those problems. At that point I was taking something for every function that there was: to wake up, to go to sleep, to go to the bathroom, my body wasn't working anymore without using something.

She went home and shaved off just a little of the new pill and tried it. Right away my nose was swelling up and I couldn't breathe out of my nose. She went back to the doctor. He was kind of dismissive: Amy, you have a stuffy nose, just take the pills, you're being dramatic, trust me, just take the three. It was three pills.

This was 2003. She was 30 years old. Her youngest baby was three months old. This baby had come home from the hospital with laryngomalacia, so her throat wasn't done developing, and Amy was told to keep her from crying because the throat can kind of fold in on itself. The stress was enormous.

One night, I was holding my daughter and the room started to get dark, and I noticed this darkness, it was kind of unusual the way it came in, almost like when clouds just suddenly sweep over an area. The room just kind of folded in with this darkness, super super black. But to me there was something incredibly comforting happening, it felt like a quilt was coming around me. Then a glow came in over her. Her daughter, who had been a really serious baby, just suddenly giggled spontaneously and smiled. Amy was able to see her smile and giggle for the first time. Then the baby closed her eyes and fell into a deep restful sleep.

I had this feeling, it kind of reminds me of the cartoon I saw when I was younger where the blackness comes in and then at the end the cartoon figure comes out and says, that's all folks. It was beautiful and comforting and yet she had this feeling like it's over. She put the baby in her bed. Her husband was in the back corner of the house, reading or studying. I went in the room and I just thought I have to take the pills and I'm not going to worry about it anymore, I just need to do what I need to do.

She laid down on the bed and took all three pills. Within minutes, I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe through my nose, I couldn't open my mouth to breathe through my mouth, I couldn't breathe at all, and I couldn't flinch my muscles, it was almost like I was paralyzed. She went into a panic in her mind. I can't breathe, I can't breathe. I got to that point where I knew if I go any longer, that's it, this is over, and it was just this really fast spinning in my head of this panic, like there's nothing I can do.

Then: there was suddenly this suction from the top of my head, and I was free.

The Portal

I didn't have to breathe, of course, and I was coming through a portal and there were a number of other people and it felt totally normal. She appreciated hearing other speakers at the IANDS conference say the same thing: it felt really normal. I didn't have any reason to go, oh my gosh, I didn't see gold-lined roads or angels with wings, it just was like here, except much more, it much more intensely real.

She compares it to the difference between old black-and-white TVs and new HD screens. All we knew was the TVs we had, but now we look back at those and it's just almost comical, they don't compare to the TVs we have now. And there it was just so much more real and clear, and her mind was clear. She didn't have a reason to think she was dead or that anyone else was.

As people came through, there's communication going on, but it's not quite like here where how I'm talking, I just could, everyone could understand each other, and for some reason this also seemed completely natural. Fear wasn't a strong factor. She saw a man in a certain area and I seem to have this understanding that he was like a mentor or a teacher. She wanted to know who he was. When they communicated, she found out he died in a car accident, he drove trucks as a profession. She still doesn't know why she wasn't freaking out yet, why it didn't hit her that people were talking about being dead.

His job, what he was there for, was the factor of humility. He was able to teach people in this space the importance of humility. This kind of humility that I could feel from him wouldn't have been what I would have expected prior to my NDE, it wasn't like a bowing or a being small, there was a confidence and a rawness. He acted like a tuning fork to that area. It was kind of like a gift to those who were there to just feel what that was. I could feel it and it was peaceful and it was a good thing.

He explained that the people that were in this space had brought themselves to their own demise, which Amy understood almost like suicide, but not necessarily how we might imagine. Someone was drunk driving and they ended up dying, or someone mixed the wrong drugs and ended up dying, or someone took like a risk, like I'm gonna jump over that cliff and see if I make it to the other side. It was a little different than what she expected, but she kind of understood it from their point of view as a kind of suicide.

Then he told her something that would change everything: despite what he could offer the people there, he couldn't fully teach them, because true learning happens in the body. This was a big deal to Amy personally, because so much of her life was about wanting to escape the body, wanting that for other people. She had grown up hearing, when you die you get to throw off that glove and be free. I kind of thought like, here is the more negative, there the more positive.

But with this understanding, the body is, in a way, there, as hard as it is to see and understand, true learning happens within the body, because when we are in experience in this form, there's something that evolves within us, that can evolve within us at soul level, that makes the body an important part of the whole. It isn't one's good and one's bad. The two work together in an important way. That was very healing for me personally, to come to a better understanding of the body, Amy says. You can read more about Amy's insights on the body in this video.

Which Kind of Cheese Is the Moon Made Of?

At one point, Amy was moving to another area and there was another man at a crosspoint. She recognized that he also was similar to a mentor or teacher. I remember suddenly becoming excited, like I could ask, I know what I want to ask. She came from a background where it was a lot of "this is what it is and it's not that, this is what's true and this isn't, this is the right one and those don't have it all."

I was like, well, here it is, I want to ask, and I kind of went up, and I didn't even have to ask because the question that was there in my mind, well, which one is the true church, he already, it was already in his understanding that it was in my mind. And at the same time that she was feeling this question, I was in his place, seeing myself from his wisdom and knowledge and background. The way she saw herself asking was like a little kid who goes up to someone with maybe some more wisdom or knowledge, and it was as if I were saying, so tell me, which kind of cheese is the Moon made of? Is it Jack, Swiss, or cheddar?

He didn't answer me with words or even with that telepathic communication, he smiled at me and he just kind of lowered his head in a way that I understood he was going to let me wait a while, whatever a while means, until I was ready to figure out what it was I really needed to ask. Ever since then, when she's come back in prayer or meditation, she's always kept that in mind: keep in mind, Amy, you may not be asking the question you mean to ask, or you may not be there quite yet. She gives herself a little extra time. Sometimes she realizes in meditation, this isn't the question, and she doesn't even know what it is yet. Amy explores this question further in another video about true religion.

Tell Them I'm Free

A young woman came up to Amy at a certain point. She was very, very close and intensely moved into my face, like kind of like pay attention, not that she said that, but I could feel from her, this is important. She started saying things like "tell them this, tell them that, I need you to say this, I need you to explain that." She was giving Amy information about her life, personal stuff. Amy wasn't sure why because she didn't recognize her. But she seemed nice and Amy wanted to be polite.

She was saying things like, tell them I'm free, tell them I'm not in any pain, tell them that I am happy, I have joy now. She said, tell them that before I went I had started to sing and that brought me joy and I really loved singing. There were just a number of things she was offering, including what it felt like when she died. She was offering to me how she died and I could empathetically feel what she went through, which for some reason didn't bother me, I could feel it and it was okay.

Then she actually had a like a presentation where she started singing, and I was like, yeah, she does have a really good voice, it's beautiful voice.

The Order of Everything

Time and space were strange there. Amy didn't even know when she came back what happened first, second, third. But at some point, simultaneously or separately (she can't say which), there was an entirely different portion of her NDE. In the other part, I wasn't connected to any of it, I didn't have the stuff that made up who I am, I wasn't, I in the other part it was like I was just soul. And yet in some way she retained this beingness that made up "this right here." I was part of all of it and I felt one with all of it, and in this other part I had my guide with me and I was at home with my guide.

This part was the most comforting and beautiful experience. My guide was with me and I had, and I did end up hearing this here a little bit too, so again another nice thing I appreciate when other people share because then I don't feel as weird talking about it, but there it was like I had access to everything. What struck her so strongly was being able to not just see that there was math and science in everything. It wasn't like a teacher gets up at the front and says let me show you this math, I was all of it, and I knew that while I was these things, this math and this science and this order that was in the universe, I knew that there was nowhere that it wasn't.

Even if there's a tiny bug going across the room, I knew that that was within this math and science too, in this beautiful order. For Amy, this was beyond just beautiful, because her life before the experience, I struggled with looking out in the world and feeling like this really looks chaotic, I get the God's in charge and he gets to have the remote control to our lives and pick what he wants, and then in the end he'll explain why he did it, but it just seems so chaotic. It frightened her. It wasn't enough. It didn't appease her.

In my experience, to be within this order and see it, there was so much order, it was beyond anything I could imagine or ever put word to, it was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. And it's funny, she says, because also before her experience, I couldn't stand math and science, and it was like this huge mental block for me, I couldn't even get to like third grade math without just plugging my ears. It used to frustrate her dad. She's always struggled with spatial things, time and space, numbers. I was someone who had to feel everything inside of me, so to be having teachers in school trying to teach me something that I couldn't step inside of and feel or taste just didn't work for me.

And then being in this experience where I could, I could feel it all, I was, it was really, really cool. When she was out in the universe, she had this understanding that the way everything worked was almost as if there was like a big clockwork thing going on in the sky, where everything fit and this clock thing was happening and it was perfect. Everything reflected everything, there was this reflection thing going on where the above reflected everything here, and here reflected there, and even within our own body, it's reflecting everything outside of it. She could just be part of it. It's not that someone sat down and gave me all the nitty-gritty details, I could just feel it and I knew it and I trusted it because it was, and because I was it, and it was perfect.

The Life Review

Amy had a life review. She'd grown up hearing that if you do something bad, you'll be embarrassed because you'll have to see that after you die, so you should be good. I didn't imagine it the way that it actually happened. What happened in her life review was that it was just powerfully loving.

She felt almost like a totem pole way of being. At the portal I was more identity, and then on this other part I was just like soul and I wasn't my identity, and in the life review I had this connection to the smallest part of me that was like the little ego or whatever we want to call it, and even like my animal nature, and I had this connection also to the part of me that's just soul. Then she had connection to the people on the outside all around her, and yet she could feel the oneness as well, and all the layers of everyone and everything that was. And then I also had a connection beyond that that was source.

She says "source" a lot because it feels almost weird for me to use God since my NDE because it feels almost like I'm narrowing it. But she was connected to source as well, and it all came together in her life review. I could feel everyone and I could feel myself and I had compassion on myself and other people the way as parents when we have a toddler or two toddlers, say they're playing and one gets mad and pulls the block from the other, and we're not thinking of that toddler, you're evil or you're bad or now you're not going to make it to heaven.

Everything was, I just understood everyone like children, and I wanted for everyone, including myself. In that life review, I was able to feel for myself the way we would feel for our own children, and I had this compassion for myself where I wanted for myself to be happier and to do better, not as in get the higher grade, but just to be happier, that kind of better, like have fun, lighten up, it's okay.

In this experience, I had had someone in my life who I thought was my enemy. This person came up in the life review. Amy didn't even realize she'd thought of her consciously as an enemy, but I saw her and I had judgments in my mind, you know, she's so bad or whatever, from what I had experienced or witnessed. She didn't realize she'd held that in her.

In the life review I connected with this person and that was probably the most powerful feeling of love in my whole NDE, when I was able to connect with who she really is, beyond all of the things I thought I knew about her and the judgments that I made. It doesn't condone what had happened, what she had seen. But the love that I felt from the source coming through at all the different levels, and being able to see her and who she really is and what she's connected to, was another mind-blowing thing for me.

After my NDE I came back and immediately was just, it was a big relief, I was sobbing and just all this stuff coming out, and I could almost feel like my body physically was changing because I had this love for her that was like the love that you would feel for a firstborn child. She just loved her so much and wanted for her.

Novata: The Living Planet

Then Amy had a part where it was like I was getting downloading. She saw the planet come in. This was planet Earth and I saw letters above the planet in capitals, it was N-O-V-A-T-A, and I, this is Novata. When she saw this, I heard a voice that was saying the seven days of the week, it was in Spanish I understood, but it was doing the seven days of the week, and then I heard, prepare for the seventh day.

She ended up going around the planet, and as I went around the planet I could feel the energies and frequencies of all the different countries, and every place I was going around I could feel that each place had its own kind of frequency or spirit about it that was special to that place. And yet she could also feel how they were interconnected. It was this important whole that was needed for the whole planet. It was very interesting to feel that not only did a country have its own frequency, but then places within the country had their own, and then cities within that, and even neighborhoods, and at every level that everything was interconnected and yet special at the same time.

She had this understanding coming in. This was one thing that actually did come in words, I had very little that I could bring back that I could say and it said this, but one thing I kept getting that repeated even after I came back was, come back to the Earth. Her understanding was that there was something with the food on the planet that it was not in purest form and that it needed to come back to its pure state, and that this was very important, and I understood the word tainted. She had been in so much physical pain for so long.

She also had an understanding that we can learn from the Native Americans. When she came back, right away everything changed, it was instantly, I started eating much more simple, more pure, I didn't really know there was a thing such as food that has been mutated or changed, but I was trying to get food in its most pure form, and I've stuck with that ever since. She's been eating very simply, more pure, and she's tried to think of the way Native Americans eat very simply. That's something that's helped me a lot.

She didn't know what Novata meant. I did have someone who contacted me who read my near-death experience online, and her name is Gail Newhouse, and she said I wanted to tell you that I looked up what Novata is, and I did find something on Novata, and she told me that it means new birth or new beginning.

When she saw the planet, the colors on the planet were intense, but I kind of have already explained that on that side the colors are way more clear and intense, and this is the blurry place, this is the black-and-white TV realm, and there it was just like it is as it really is. The planet was just beautiful.

There was an overlay, almost like a different layer or dimension to it, but I could see there was an eye, like this kind of an eye, and when I first saw it, it was closed, but it was in the process of opening over the planet, it was just one eye encompassing the planet. She saw the planet as a being. I knew it as a being, and so this is how I see the planet still, that it's a being, and so it's important to me now, and I hadn't seen it that way before.

She saw different planets, different moons. I saw one planet that was completely covered in water. She saw things orbiting around. Then the planet comes up right in front of her.

The Call to Return

My guide says that it's time to go back. When her guide told her that, I almost felt like a rupturing in my being, at just the idea of separating from what this situation was, it was like there's no possibility, there, that's not, I didn't even think like, well, okay, now we're going to get into an argument because I don't want to go back and let's see who wins, I just, it didn't matter, I wasn't going back.

But what was so painful, and I say painful but it sounds weird, but yes, I felt agony, what was so painful was just the idea of division, separation. She felt a feeling like if she were glass, it felt like the glass shattered and I was shattering, and I just was, I was wailing, but it was so deep, it was like if I were in the physical body I would say every cell in my body seemed to be in agony and crying out, and it was guttural, there was like a moaning, and I couldn't even get it out because it was so powerful, it was almost like an implosion.

Her guide said, look to your left. She looked to her left and my four-year-old daughter was being brought to me, at the time she was four years old, and a guide was with her, and she was being brought to me, and she comes up to me over here and she just kind of reaches up to me and does like a tugging thing. Which of course brings her back to identity rather than this whole lack of attachments. Suddenly there's her daughter.

She's saying, mommy, but who will take care of us? And she's smiling, and before she could even finish asking me, I was saying, of course I will. Amy doesn't see herself as saying that at the level she's at right now. What I'm trying to say is that on my own I don't believe that I would have said that, because in the place I was in I knew everything was okay, I didn't need to go back, and even if someone had said, hey, remember your family, do you want to go back, I would have said they're fine, I'm going to stay.

But when she specifically asked me, it was the call, and because in that place I was so connected to the source and the higher love and everything that was there that was so powerful, and I was one with it, that was coming through as part of who I, who or what I was, that helped answer. In that place, it was the love that was coming through, the divine love, that said, of course I will.

They took her daughter back. Just still trying to come to terms with I'm leaving this place was still so difficult, and the weeping or this pain was still coming through. Her guide says, look to your right. She looks to her right and there's a holographic image, and it's a living holographic image, it's not a movie or something made up, it was my mom, and it was my mom in the future. It was like from here to here, and she could see that her mom was fragile, struggling, not having an easy time. My mom comes from a time period where people did their hair well and they dressed really well, 50s girl, and I could see that she had like a little hair here and there, and I was thinking, oh my gosh, my mom would not be okay with that, and I just wanted to be there for her, like naturally I wanted to help her.

She knows the things her mom cares about. I move toward this holograph of my mom and I felt myself willing myself to go forward, and in doing this I understood that there was a level of what I am and what I come from that did want to go back. It was just hard in a certain part of her to understand that there was a higher will that's part of her that did want to go back. She did understand. But still continued with the crying, like how do I actually just go, because I couldn't imagine doing that action and going.

There's the planet waiting for her. I'm still in this deep crying and my guide says, very well, and then it was like there was a spin of a vortex spinning, and it comes to me, and we became one. She knew that her guide and she were one. She got, put your finger out and reach toward the planet. This is the first time in that part of her experience coming to the idea of body again, other than her daughter reaching toward her. I reached forward and it was like I could see the outer form of the tip of my finger as I reached toward the planet, and there was like an electric zipline or something that just shot out at my fingertip. There was just an immediate suction and it was instant.

The Return

Then I was back and I'm in my bedroom. She has her guide still with her. But I couldn't connect to my body, I could see that my body was in the bed, and at this point my husband is next to my body. She's trying to get in her body and she couldn't feel anything. She got this panic because I'm not back there where I was, which was so awesome, and I'm not feeling safe back in my body. She's getting frantic, hysterical. I feel my guide saying, go through the throat, go through the throat.

All I can feel of myself is that I'm energy and my consciousness, so I start blasting myself over and over through the throat of my body, and I just keep doing this, throwing my energy through the throat. Then she sees the jaw drop and this kind of a like a groan noise, almost like a toad, just like air passed, a little bit of air passed out of the mouth, just enough to make the slightest low sound.

My husband says, Amy. She just kept doing this, throwing her energy through the throat. Then he says, Amy, again, this time reaching over, and then he kind of jumps up and I see him running to the light switch, and he flips it on, and he's running over and he looks at me, and his face just looked like it turned to wax, and his hairline, there were beads of sweat that just instantly formed around his hairline. He's grabbing her, saying Amy, Amy, over and over, shaking the body, trying to lift it. I was surprised, I remember being really surprised, like why is it so hard for him to lift, because he's pretty strong, big guy, and it'd be easy to lift me, but he was really having a hard time like lifting the body.

She just had this understanding that with his hands on my body, it's going to be okay, because he's like a cable line, the physical body connecting to my body would send the what was needed through. At this point she just relaxed and waited for this to happen. Sure enough, as he was doing this, I could, that was the first thing I could physically feel, was the electricity was running all over the top of my skin, coming from his hands, from head to toe, it finally covered me, and then I started connecting with this electricity, that's what I connected with, and then I was in my body. Amy discusses this process of returning to her body in more detail in this video about the cable guys.

Her husband's asking what happened. It was just too much and she didn't know how to begin or what words to use. He kept saying, we've got to write it down, you've got to write it down. I hesitated because I just thought, I know how this sounds, so I hesitated for many, many years.

The Message

After this experience, I went right away to church, and my husband was surprised because he was saying, you know, you think after something like that you'd be in bed for two weeks. She was very determined to get to church. It wasn't because I needed to go to church, it was like there was something that was telling me, you have to be there, there's something going on, you have to be there. She just knew it was one of those things where you get a feeling you're supposed to be somewhere.

By the way, right after her experience, her husband was kind of freaking out, like what do I call 911, what do we need to do. I was totally adamant, there's no way you're calling anyone, I'm not going to a doctor, I don't need to ask a doctor if I'm okay, I was totally sure that I was okay, I was more okay than ever, so there's no way that I was going to let him call a doctor or anyone.

She showed up at church, not sure what she was doing. She sat down. Then at the part of church, the most sacred part, where they're passing bread and the water, I felt right then a very strong, very powerful, like right now, this is it, get up and go out. She didn't know why but she was still very much with her guide. She stood up and left.

Out in the main area there was a woman sitting in a chair, or actually like a double couch, a love seat, and she was crying, very heavily crying, and she was surrounded by a number of people who were comforting her and hugging her. Amy still wasn't sure exactly what she was going to be doing with her, so she kind of walked off down the hall, took a break, waited for a little bit, came back. When she came back, the woman didn't have the people around her, so Amy was able to ask her what was going on. She said that she just found out that her daughter had died.

Amy right away got this flash, but she didn't want to say anything weird, it just wasn't appropriate for her to say anything at that point, and she didn't know for sure. So she invited her: do you want to come back to my house tomorrow? She knew very specifically what the young woman looked like in her experience. She had a very unusual look and the coloring in her hair and eyes. I said, would you feel like you could come talk to me about it tomorrow? And she said yes, and I was surprised that she was open about that. Amy said, could you bring a photo? Because I figured if it's not her, I still would want to be there for her, and if it is, then we might have something to talk about.

She came and she brought a black-and-white photo. But I mean, even with a black-and-white photo, I knew right away that it was that young woman. Amy said to her, did your daughter have like an unusual red coloring in her hair, the really unusual color red? And she said yes. She described her eyes, then the unusual color of her eyes. The woman was surprised, yes.

Then I was able to say what happened, okay, I have to wrap it up, I was able to explain to the lady what happened in this, in my experience, which was comforting for her, and I was able to give information on the death. That's basically her experience.

What This Tells Us

Amy Call's story is one of the most detailed and layered NDEs I've encountered in more than 5,000 accounts. What makes it especially significant is the way it addresses the oldest human question: why is there suffering? Amy spent her entire childhood and young adulthood tormented by this question. She couldn't reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, loving God with a world full of pain. She felt that pain as if it were her own. She prayed to be a tool in God's hands. She begged for answers. Instead, her body gave out, her breathing stopped, and she was pulled through a portal into a place that answered the question she didn't even know she was asking.

The answer wasn't theological. It was experiential. She became the math and science of the universe. She didn't learn that there was order, she was the order. She didn't see the interconnectedness of all things, she felt it from the inside, as if she were the tiny bug crossing the room and the galaxy spinning overhead and the mother grieving for her daughter all at once. The chaos she'd feared her entire life dissolved. What looked like randomness from here was, from there, a perfect clockwork, a reflection of above and below, a living system so intricate and beautiful that she could only describe it as being home.

This is what so many experiencers report: the sense that what we call chaos is actually order we don't yet understand. That suffering isn't arbitrary. That the body, far from being a prison, is the classroom where the deepest learning happens. Amy was told this directly by a mentor who had died in a car accident, a man whose job was to teach humility. He couldn't fully teach the souls in that portal because true learning happens in the body. This is a radical claim. It suggests that physical life, with all its pain and limitation, is not the punishment we must endure before we get to the good part. It's the good part. It's where we evolve at the soul level in ways we can't anywhere else.

Amy's life review is another piece of this puzzle. She expected judgment. She got love. She expected to be embarrassed by her mistakes. Instead, she felt the same compassion for herself that a parent feels for a toddler who trips and falls. She saw the person she'd considered an enemy and felt a love so powerful it was the peak of her entire NDE. Not because the harm that person caused was erased or excused, but because she could see who that person really was beyond the surface, beyond the judgments, beyond the story. She could see the soul.

This is the pattern that emerges again and again in NDEs: we are not our worst moments. We are not our pain. We are not even our identities. We are something far larger and more connected than we can imagine from inside these bodies. And yet the body matters. The body is where we learn. The body is where love becomes real.

Amy came back with a mission she didn't ask for: to deliver a message to a grieving mother from her daughter on the other side. She didn't know the daughter. She'd never met the mother. But she knew, with the same certainty she knew the math of the universe, that she was supposed to be at church that day. She was supposed to describe the unusual red hair and the unusual eyes. She was supposed to say: tell them I'm free, tell them I'm not in any pain, tell them I have joy now. This is not the kind of thing you can fabricate. This is the kind of thing that happens when the veil is thinner than we think, when the other side reaches through and says: I'm still here, I'm okay, tell them I love them.

Amy also came back with instructions about the Earth. She saw the planet as a living being with an eye that was opening. She heard the word "Novata," which she later learned means new birth or new beginning. She was told to come back to the Earth, that the food on the planet was tainted and needed to return to its pure state. She didn't know what GMOs were. She didn't know about industrial agriculture. But she knew, the way she knew everything in that place, that something was wrong and something needed to change. She's been eating simply and purely ever since, following the guidance she received, trying to honor the living planet she saw with such clarity.

This is what Amy's NDE offers us: not answers in the form of doctrine, but answers in the form of experience. The universe is not chaotic. Suffering is not meaningless. The body is not a burden. We are not alone. We are not separate. We are part of a living, breathing, interconnected whole that is so much more beautiful and orderly than we can see from here. And when we die, we don't end. We go home. We remember who we really are. We feel the love that was always there, waiting for us to recognize it.

Amy spent 30 years asking why God allows suffering. The answer she got was this: because the body is where we learn. Because physical life is the classroom. Because love, to be real, must be tested. Because we are not victims of a capricious deity with a remote control. We are eternal beings, choosing to be here, choosing to learn, choosing to evolve. And the chaos we see is not chaos at all. It's order we don't yet understand. It's the reflection of something perfect, unfolding exactly as it should.

That's not a comfortable answer. But it's the answer Amy brought back. And it's the answer that has allowed her to live with the suffering she once couldn't bear. She still feels it. She's still an empath. But now she knows what it means. Now she knows where it fits. Now she knows that the tiny bug crossing the room is part of the same perfect math as the stars overhead. And so is she. And so are we all.