In the mid-1990s when I was in my 40s, I had an experience while sleeping that was more real than any dream I’ve ever had and still comes back to me in vivid detail, much more real than even many waking experiences.

By that time, I had read Raymond Moody’s first book about NDEs, so I knew what they were, but it sounded like they happened only when people were clinically dead or dying.

I was dreaming about something that now I can’t even remember, when I suddenly found myself in another reality. I say “reality” because it definitely wasn’t a dream and, in fact, was more real than anything I’d ever experienced. I suddenly was aware that I was in this beautiful outdoors, with two beings in long white robes. One felt male and one female. We were walking up to the top of a low hill or ridge. As we reached the top, we could see all around us. To our right was a small copse of trees along the ridge top, and several others were scattered around the land we could see below and in the distance.

The closest to this place I’ve ever seen is the countryside in central Wales, around the Carreg Cennan castle area, where the hill on which the castle ruins sit affords a breathtaking view of the countryside below and far off, as well as other low hills, streams, and trees.

This place was much like that except beautiful on a much more intense level. The grass was the most beautiful grass I’d ever seen, as were the trees and flowers and shrubs. There was a stream between the bottom of our hill and another, and the sound of the water running along it, which we could hear, was almost like chimes. The colors of everything, including the sky and clouds were beyond description. There were other people, also in white robes, walking together and singly nearby and in the distance.

The Light was beyond words to describe. It was bright, but without bothering my eyes, and it was white and gold at the same time. It didn’t come from just the sky but from everything, every plant, every blade of grass, the stream, the ground, the sky, the clouds, and the other people. And it felt like a conscious presence.

Most astonishing of all, however, were the overwhelming feelings of Love and Peace that came from the Light and filled everything, including my mind. As a child growing up in a small Missionary Baptist Church, I could never understand the talk about heaven being a place of everlasting Peace and how wonderful that would be. My life had never been one of peace, for a number of reasons, and I couldn’t understand how such Peace could be anything but boring. Nor have I ever felt anything close to the Love that came from everything and everywhere and especially from the Light and permeated my entire being. It took my breath away.

Finally, I asked the two Beings who they were. They told me they were two of my three guides and that they had been with me all through my life. I believed them because I could feel this huge Love from them for me as a soul, and I could see it in their eyes.

I asked them why they had brought me to this place. They told me it is the place where I will go first when I die and that I needed to see it, that there would be some things coming in my life that my seeing this would help. They let me look and just bask in the beauty, Peace, and Love for a couple of more minutes, and then they told me it was time for me to go back.

I burst into tears and started begging them not to send me back, to let me stay in this incredible Love, but they said I couldn’t. I pleaded and cried, but they wouldn’t relent. And suddenly I was awake, in my bed, my pillow soaked from the tears I was crying. And it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body.

Within a few years, I faced some challenges beyond anything that had gone before, and I understood why it had been important for me to see what will come after this life. It gave me a spiritual anchor to hold on to and an unshakeable belief that this Earth life is just part of the picture of our souls and consciousness.

Even now, when I need to calm my mind, I can put myself back in that indescribable place, feeling the Light and Love and Peace that are far beyond anything here. I ache to return there, but I also know it’s not time yet. The memory and the details have never faded, and they still feel just as real as they did that night.