Dr. Mary Neal is a successful spinal surgeon whose near-death experience has inspired millions. Her story, told in Angel Studios’ new movie “After Death,” unfolded on a South American river when she became submerged while kayaking and says she visited heaven. She recently told CBN Digital, “My husband and I are avid kayakers. We’ve kayaked for decades all around the country and internationally.”
So, the couple joined friends in Chile for a special trip for her husband’s birthday, but while they were making their way down a river, the joyful occasion was obliterated. Neal ended up going over a waterfall and experienced something she could “never have dreamed up.” She continued, “The boat and I were immediately submerged under eight to 10 feet of water. I didn’t panic. I set about trying to free me or free the boat, but the weight of the water and the force of the current was too great for me to do anything.”
As she considered her options, she concluded she would very likely die, finding herself forced to face the unthinkable. Neal said somehow, she mustered the strength to ask God for His will to be done. Neal said, “The moment I asked that, I was immediately overcome with this very physical sensation of being held and comforted and reassured that everything would be fine.” And this is where Neal’s story takes a wild turn: she then says she found herself in heaven. She said, “I never felt alive and then dead, conscious and then unconscious. I felt conscious and then more conscious, alive and then more alive.”
Neal added, “I was being held by Christ.” While in heaven, she said she was still herself but that she was her “best” self. Initially, she thought it was a hallucination based on her trauma and said she was doing “self-assessment examples” in heaven. She added, “I knew I’d been underwater too long to still be alive. So, I thought, ‘OK, I have an air pocket. So I would think about, ‘OK, take a breath. Do you feel air?’ And I’d say, ‘No.'”
However, she wasn’t suffering or struggling to breathe. Instead, she felt “glorious,” describing the feeling of Jesus’ love and being guided through a life review. She said she even felt her spirit leave her body. Neal said, noting the moment she felt her spirit leave her body, “Jesus kind of released me to the heavens. And then, I was greeted by this group. I knew that they were people who had known me and loved me as long as I have existed. I knew that they were all people who were important in my life story.”
Neal ended up coming back from this experience, something she described as “difficult,” especially as she recovered and still pined for the heaven experience. The doctor described the series of emotions people who have near-death experiences. While it’s “beautiful and wonderful,” she said it comes with a “weight of responsibility.” It’s also somewhat isolating, considering the gravity of the claims and the reactions they illicit.
Today, though, Neal gladly shares her experience — one that has transformed her life. While she might have previously said she was a Christian, she said it was more “cultural” in nature. Now, she said she fully lives that out. Neal said, “My number one identity is that I am a beloved child of God, period. Everything is secondary to that. … My experience radically transformed my understanding of life and of death.”