Robert Bare had been a policeman for 23 years, his view of the world in stark black and white. After retiring from policing, he was for a time a university professor, an international business consultant, a city manager, and a tribal administrator for a Native American nation. In each of these positions, he had tremendous influence over others’ lives. Bare knew this, but in 2009 another dimension to his influence unfolded before his eyes.
In 2008, he received a phone call from a friend he'd served on the police force with in the 60s.
“We were talking, and he just stopped all of a sudden and he goes, ‘Robert, I have to ask you a question.’ He goes, ‘I’d like to know if you’re right with the Lord.‘ And I said, ‘Why are you asking me that?’” His friend said he just felt compelled to ask, and Bare replied, “I think so,” and they didn’t talk about it further.
Not long after that, Bare woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweat. Standing at the foot of his bed was his mother, who had passed away three years prior, looking as she did when he was a little boy.
He was overwhelmed, and she disappeared after that, leaving Bare upset and disappointed that he hadn’t the chance to tell her he loved her.
Bare went and got a full physical that he “passed with flying colors,” and told his father about the incident as well. With a “clean bill of health,” he put the event away in his mind—until less than a year later, when he received news that the friend he'd had that phone call with had passed away. He gave a eulogy at the funeral, and saw a lot of mutual friends he hadn’t seen in a long time, but did not tell others about the call.
Some time later, he woke up in the middle of the night again. This time, his friend was at the foot of the bed, looking as he did when they were young.
Heart Attack
This was around spring break, when Bare would visit his grandchildren down in Arizona. He spent a week there, uncomfortable in the hot weather, but didn’t think much about the discomfort at the time.“It came time to leave, and my son drove me to the airport, dropped me off. We said out goodbyes, and I started to feel really sick,” Bare said. He got some aspirin, made it through the check in, and made it onto the plane.
“I was actually putting stuff in the overhead bin, and I dropped dead from a massive heart attack. I don’t remember anything from being on the plane after that,” he said. Fortunately there were some firemen and a doctor on the plane at the time; they administered CPR and used the defibrillator and then he was taken to the hospital.
Bare didn’t know this. He was, while pronounced dead, experiencing something else entirely.
“I gravitated into a light, and it was just—absolutely beautiful,” he said. “Someone or something was with me, and I'd like to think it was my friend, because if he told me he would do something he would do it.”
“I went up and I saw colors that don’t exist on this earth, it was absolutely phenomenal, and everything was warm,” he said. “The feeling was of love and peace.”
“But I ended up in a situation where I was in front of a higher power, and it was so humbling for me, it still bothers me to even talk about it,” Bare said. He remembers not even being able to look directly at this higher power, because he felt so humbled. Bare has been interviewed many times about his story, because he feels a mission to share what he saw, but each time, he won’t speak for a few days afterward.
Though Bare could not bring himself to look, whether telepathically, or through some form of communication, Bare understood clearly what was being said.
“The words were similar to, ‘What good have you done in your life?’” Bare said.
Suddenly, Bare felt there were souls all around him, as if he was inside a full auditorium. Then, to his left, what many near death experiencers such as Bare describe as a “life review” took place: in an instant, the course of Bare’s life was played out. But in viewing it, he could experience the inner thoughts and feelings of everyone involved. It began with an image of his father and mother, who was wearing a plaid skirt, getting their photo taken in front of a Chevrolet, which he later learned was the day his mother found out she was pregnant with him.
He saw that time he stole baseball cards as a young boy, and how his parents marched him back to the store to let the shop owner pass judgement. He saw his time as a policeman after the riots in South Los Angeles, and heard the unexpressed thanks of some he had encountered. He also witnessed betrayals he hadn’t realized during his life in that review.
From the Bedside
“I was taken to a hospital, and there was a doctor from Pakistan who worked on me and he wouldn’t let me die. I was revived. I'd been deceased for probably about 45 minutes total from the time I was in the airplane,” he said. “He revived me and then a short time later I died again.”“This time I had a different experience,” he said. “I was hovering above the bed in the hospital, watching them work on me.”
He saw the medical staff in a panic, and he saw himself flatline. He watched as people went through his belongings that had come with him from the ambulance, looking for his insurance card. He tried to tell the man where it was, but realized no one could hear him.
Then his heartbeat was back.
“I ended up in intensive care for a long time, I had all these machines hooked up to me—it was not fun,” Bare said. The doctor asked Bare what he remembered, and Bare started telling him about that “out of body” experience.
“He goes, ‘wait a minute.’ He goes down, and he found the people who were there when I came in, and he says ‘you tell them what you told me.’” The doctor was curious about how accurate Bare’s experience was, and the staff who had been searching Bare’s things said “that’s exactly what happened. Word for word.”
After being revived, being hooked up to large machines and resting uncomfortably in the hospital, Bare told the doctor all he wanted to do was go back home to Oregon. The doctor told him he needed another surgery, and at Bare’s insistence, arranged it to take place in Oregon so he could go home first.
In the recovery room in Oregon, Bare woke up to a loud storm outside the window blowing water in every direction, and at his bedside was an elderly nun.
“I asked, ‘am I dead?’” Bare said. “She goes ‘you’re not dead ... I’m praying for you.’”
“She said, I’ve been a sister my whole life, and I'd just like to hear from you. What do you remember? It’s very important to me.” Bare, woozy from multiple operations at the time, said not now. But when the nun came back later, he told her.
“It was very emotional. And I realized how important it was to talk about what I experienced,” he said. “I laid out everything to her ... and I think by doing that, by talking to other people, whether they want to believe you or not, at least it’s all out there. It’s what I experienced.”
Bare had never heard about near death experiences until he had one himself. Shortly after his recovery, he remembers being on YouTube and clicking on a recommended video about The Beatles’ George Harrison’s last interview.
“And here’s George Harrison dying of cancer, talked about having all these things, wealth, women, notoriety, anything he wanted; he said, I should have been worried about what happens to me when I die,” Bare said. “And that’s why I talk. I can’t tell you how many people have told me after they’ve heard me talk that it’s changed their life. Where they’re kinder to people. They’re no longer so hard on individuals.”
“I now have had 5,088 additional days of life,” Bare said early in March.
“I am so grateful. I get up every morning, I’m amazed I have another day,” he said. “I live every day like it’s my last day.”
“What you do in your life matters. I’m convinced of it,” he said. “I’ve felt compelled to apologize to some people for my behavior ... for them, some of them don’t even remember what happened, but I saw it, and I tuned into it, and my memory about that is so vivid.”
Bare is not naive to criticism of his stories and others like it; some will say that because there is no proof, there is no stock to his words. He says he doesn’t mind it.
“I’ve done what I feel like I came back to life to, and that’s to spread this word,” he said.
Bare has done more than share his own story. In 2020, during the pandemic, he and Dr. Yvonne Kason founded Spiritual Awakenings International, a place where people who have had experiences like Bare share their story. In just a short period of time, their subscribers grew to include those from 77 countries around the world, and stories are pouring in. The co-founders feel their organization is aptly named; and thanks to it, they say they are witnessing a spiritual awakening across the world.
“There was a time, probably, when people who talk the way I talk ... they probably would have burned us on the stake,” he said. “But we’re gathering people from around the world and it’s been a phenomenal success.”
