Nancy Rynes has spoken out about the near-death experience that transformed her from an atheist into someone who says she no longer fears death and will one day return “home.”
Rynes, a scientist, geologist, archaeologist and author of “Awakenings from the Light: 12 Life Lessons from a Near Death Experience,” shared her account in an interview with Dr. Mayim Bialik, the actress and neuroscientist best known for playing Amy on “The Big Bang Theory.” Raised Catholic, Rynes had grown up deeply rejecting many of the religion’s teachings and actively believed there was no God or Heaven, she told Bialik. She was also terrified of death.
That changed after she was hit by a car while biking and underwent surgery to repair her spine. When anesthesia took hold, Rynes said she initially believed she had simply woken up early from the procedure.
“I thought that I had woken up out of anesthesia at first,” she said, which “freaked” her out.
But the operating room had vanished. In its place, she found herself standing on a hillside surrounded by beautiful views she described as “ethereal.” Energy appeared to be flowing everywhere.
“It wasn’t like any place I had physically been to on in this reality in this on this planet,” she told Bialik. “It looked a lot like the Highlands of Scotland now in hindsight. But I’ve never been there. Not in this lifetime.”
The landscape featured a misty fog and a metallic glint to everything, Rynes recalled. There was no sun, yet the area remained intensely bright. The light seemed diffused, almost like a photographer’s umbrella, with tendrils of energy visible everywhere she looked. The strangeness of the scene made her suspect something serious had happened.
Because of the strange place she had woken up in, Rynes began to think she “may have actually died on the operating table.” The possibility unsettled her for a particular reason: as an atheist, she was uncertain why she was not in Hell.
To this question, she said a voice answered her and left her “bawling.”
“It was like this kind of voice – loud but not loud at the same time – that was around [sic] me and it came through me,” she recounted.
The voice delivered a message that fundamentally altered her worldview. It told her that she was its child, and this place was her home.
From that moment on, when she regained consciousness and felt what she described as the “grief” of returning to her body, Rynes said her fear of death dissolved entirely. She now believes she will simply return “home” when she passes away.
Rynes’s account joins a growing body of testimony from people who have reported near-death experiences, or NDEs, moments when a person is clinically unstable or momentarily dies and later describes vivid, often otherworldly sensations. Survivors frequently describe being pulled into dreamlike dimensions with occurrences they consider too remarkable to be imagined. Some former atheists and non-believers have previously described similar experiences that left them questioning their prior convictions or becoming religious.
Rynes has since built a career around her experience, writing and speaking about the lessons she says she learned. Her book, “Awakenings from the Light,” outlines 12 life lessons drawn from her time in what she describes as the afterlife.