In 1998 I had a near-fatal car accident. I lost a lot of blood, had to be cut out of the car with the jaws of life, and doctors later told me that at one point I was one notch above brain death on the Glascow Coma scale. I was in a coma for some time. Two weeks, maybe, I forget. 

Before I woke up in hospital I had a long, dream-like experience. I can still remember a great many details of that dream, though I recall very few of my normal dreams in life. As far as I can tell, you would call it an NDE-like experience. 

It was something like the merging of realities in the hypnagogic state. For much of the "dream" I was in a hospital bed, and I accepted that as normal. For instance, I was hoisted out of a high apartment window, with this weird machine, down to the road below, while still in a queen-sized bed. It was an incredibly slow and complicated operation that took hours. Then, for days, it seemed, I drove around Johannesburg in the bed, stopping at traffic lights, and so on, visiting parks, speaking to people, and enjoying the road trip. At another point I was on an island, still in the bed. I drove my bedmobile around these impossibly twisting mountain roads, marveling at the wondrous, otherworldly scenery. For months, it seemed, I was in a convoy of shipping containers on a highway, still in bed, with monitors and nurses, doctors, and random people. There were storylines at times, but mostly, I was travelling. At another point someone was removing a thin elephant trunk that was mysteriously growing from my nose with a scalpel (intubation).

Beyond this, I saw thoughts coming out of people's heads in pictures. For instance, a nurse was observing me, and I saw mathematical equations above her head as she perused my chart. Then I saw child-like scribbles, typical of children's drawings stuck on fridge doors, and I knew she was thinking about her children. At another point I was aware of the music playing on the radio nearby, and I "heard" it a few seconds before it became audible to the "body" (like precognition).

At another point, I encountered a being of light who was able to disappear into the scenery, through walls and ceilings, and so on. He/she asked me if it/they could "join with me." I considered the intriguing offer. "Okay," I replied, "but I get 51 percent share of control, and you get 49 percent." The being laughed, so mystically, and promptly disappeared through the roof. Later, many years later, I recognised that being from a childhood dream. That's another story, but it all ties together in some fantastic way.

When I came back to consciousness in hospital, I was filled with love. I tried desperately to communicate with my family, but could not. I was still intubated, and though I tried writing my words, it came out as awful, knotted scrawls. Later I attempted to explain some of my journey, but people laughed, and told me, "That was some good shit they had you on." A doctor told me it was a common experience with opiate medication, and I dismissed it all, and left it at that, more or less. But something had changed. Some kind of a door had been opened, and could never again be closed. I ignored it with all my might, for a long time.

For the next ten years I underwent many life-altering transformations. It was like ego gymnastics.

Before, I was serious, diligent, reserved, shy, introverted and awkward in social contact. I was a "goody-goody." I was very tense, highly imaginative, and a square peg in an impossible hole. Things began to slip.

I no longer cared about following that old path. I bought a leather jacket and a motorbike. I became completely agnostic, but continued to think deeply about philosophy, science, and metaphysics. I started making up for missing my early twenties, while I was a Jehovah's Witness, all neat and presentable, and started partying hard, whenever I could. My marriage fell apart. My life disintegrated, piece by piece.

I could no longer follow my career trajectory as a Logistics Manager in an Automotive manufacturing factory. I bought a bar with my sister and her husband, but later, when that didn't make much money, they left, and I continued, and I lived it up.  I smoked a lot of pot. I learned to play guitar. I lived in a blur, and one night I saw beautiful young people transform into old people in front of me. 

In terrible pain from the after-effects of the car accident, I could no longer walk, stand, sit or lie down without pain. I never totally gave myself over to the alcohol and drugs, because I knew that was not my path, informed in large part from my childhood experiences with my own parent's struggles, and all along, I was becoming deeply empty inside.

10 years after the accident, I sold the bar and took a sabbatical. I was spent.

I had tried it all. I had tried being the good guy, the husband, the father, the home owner, the middle management guy, the career guy - and it failed. I had tried religion - very sincerely - far too seriously and passionately - and it failed. I had tried philosophy. Books upon books upon books. I had tried hedonism. The full bohemian experience - chasing meaning, happiness, fulfillment in all spheres of life - and failed in every way.

I was done. I was in pain, not just in the body, or in the mind and heart, but in the spirit. I was obviously incapable of figuring it out, and finding joy or peace.

I surrendered.

A few days passed, as if something was testing my sincerity and resolve in this surrender. Then it happened.

What happened? If you have never experienced this, there is simply no way to explain, or even hint at the magnitude, the wonder, the shock and the utter mind-ending nature of this experience. Here are some words that vainly try to name it: Spiritually Transformative Experience. Samadhi. Kundalini Awakening. Peak Experience. Turia. Awakening.

For about ten days, I walked in heaven on earth. My mind went quiet, and I entered a state that is impossible to describe in words. I came home. I remembered who and what I am. It was an exultation, and corridors of knowing stretched off into infinity. It was all just so - just so - with no words added. It was a quality of seeing that goes beyond mental bounds, beyond theory, beyond faith, beyond doubt. 

There was a physical feeling to it, in the body. It rose up through my feet, through my spine, and bit like a snake at the base of my brain, and I could see. All my life I had been dreaming, and now I was awake. I laughed. I cried. I tried to speak, but there were no words. Everything Shone! I was home! 

There was this love. Oh. My. Goodness.

I had been high before. I had been low before. I had fallen deeply in love before. I had experienced raptures before, like the waves of poetry. I had felt the love of a father for a child before - very, very deeply.

This love was something else. How can I give you a sense of it? Cosmic, maybe, but that's an awful word. Shattering. Undoing. Mind-ending. Nuclear reactions in the heart, through the fingertips, out into forever, and beyond.

It came in waves. Wave after wave after wave - and they undid me. The world was clearly ending, but it didn't matter. "This is the end, then," I thought, and laughed and laughed with such an openness of heart. Reality leaped out at me in greeting. There was language in the bark of trees. I watched a bug on the grass for - was it centuries? I looked at the trash in holy awe. I watched the cigarette smoke curl into the air, and it was wonder.

Then came this utter lucidity, far beyond the mental focus of a difficult college exam. I suddenly understood. It was not a download of facts. It was not a teaching. It was a quality of seeing. I watched in amazement as this unfolded for around ten days, then for about eighteen months with growing clarity, and then, and still now, it continues.

At the time I simply had no words to describe it. Now, over many years, I am refining my ability to do so, and I think it's an infinite process. I don't think I will ever stop exploring. 

I am still riding the shockwaves of that experience. Now, with a maturing of hindsight, and with age, I can look back and connect dots. The car accident did something to me, I see that clearly now, though at the time it was all fuzzy and blurry. It's really a lifetime trajectory, and there are many ways to interpret all of this.

My understanding at this point is twofold. In my heart, it's all done. I know. It's finished - and there are no more questions, no doubts, and all possibilities are open, fresh and unique. There are no strangling beliefs here. 

On the exterior of life, in the mind - it's an ongoing process of refinement. 

I can express it like this. Find out what you are - find the self. Find this thing that looks out from behind your eyes at your whole life, and there is an approach to the answer. It has no form, no colour, no texture, and no attributes, for all of these things are projections of the mind, from the mind's own center. Find the center - and there it is. You are it. I am it. At the center, it's one, whereas on the circumference we are many things. There are no things, not really. "Things" exist in mental boxes, because we put them there in our minds. In reality, it's all one, and I am it. I am the loving, conscious center of my life. I am an aperture of living awareness, observing life, which is me.