Many people have reported having profound near-death experiences (NDEs) where they seem to leave the body and experience a state of bliss—but David and Scarlet Schwartz report the unusual experience of a joint NDE.
David was on his deathbed. His mother had made funeral arrangements. When Scarlet first laid eyes on David, he was in St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, with tubes all over his body.
She had previously learned alternative healing via spiritual means in an attempt to help her special needs children. She and David had a mutual friend who asked her to try helping David.
David, who also spoke at the conference, explained his shame at the time over his substance abuse and other transgressions in his life. It was this shame that had seemed to trigger the onset of his illness.
He had been relatively healthy before he ended up hospitalized, unaware he had Wegener’s Granulomatosis. One morning, when he heard the story of someone who behaved heroically during Hurricane Katrina, it struck him that his character was poor in comparison. It hit him so hard, he broke down physically, he said.
“I walked over to the hospital and checked myself into the ER and I said, ‘I can’t breathe. I’m having heart palpitations and I can’t breathe. I think maybe I’m having a panic attack,’” he recalled.
The nurse at the ER thought it was a panic attack too, but it was ultimately diagnosed as Wegener’s Granulomatosis and his health continued to deteriorate after that.
After that first sense of profound connection with David, Scarlet continued to return, feeling she could help him through the pain and shame she felt emanating from his unconscious body. His body slowly started to recover.
On the fifth day, they had a joint out-of-body experience.
“All of a sudden, I was not in my body. All of a sudden, I was holding his hand in another dimension and he was standing up and I saw that he had brown eyes. I didn’t even know what color eyes he had because they had been closed the whole time. And he was standing there and I was standing there in this dimension,” said Scarlet.
While linked through this NDE, Scarlet says she felt a love beyond anything she had ever felt before.
“This kind of love was like all of the kinds of love combined. And I knew in that moment that I had always known this man and he had always known me. I knew in this moment that I loved this man, and he'd always loved me. I was aware that we were surrounded in a bubble of love, and that somehow we had gotten linked up together. And I didn’t know more than that except that was so profound,” recalled Scarlet.
The next day, David was able to breathe on his own, but he was still in bad shape. The nurses said that even if he survived, he'd suffer permanent kidney damage. The night after hearing this, Scarlet said she had a vision of sorts where she felt she was transported to his hospital room and saw a team of doctors, but they weren’t human.
“I don’t know what they were. They just had a bluish tinge. And they were actually replacing his kidneys in a surgical procedure,” Scarlet said. “There were two on each side and one on the end and it was almost like they dropped in healthy kidneys. And I thought I must be dreaming a lucid dream,” Scarlet said.
“I went back to the hospital the next day and his kidneys were fully functioning,” she said.
A few days later, 12 since their first meeting, he woke up and was on his feet again.
“The first thing that I remember seeing when I woke up was Scarlet and knew that I was instantly in love,” said David. It took some time for the memories to come back and they’re still not clear, but he says he later started to remember the NDE where he believes he and Scarlet met while he was unconscious. He said he awoke with a sense of peace, well-being, and connection with Scarlet. The two have been together ever since.
