The idea of an afterlife is often one of the main points of contention between religious believers and skeptics. The religious approach implies that consciousness can exist separately from the body, but science suggests otherwise. Evidence shows that brain damage alters personality, memory, and other cognitive processes, so skeptics find a mind separate from the body highly unlikely.
Riley Courtright grew up with a scientific mindset, but her outlook changed when she flatlined for 50 minutes and supposedly met God. She shared her story on a YouTube podcast. Riley explains she was transported to heaven, where time and color were completely different from Earth. After spending what felt like years with the Creator, she was sent back, and her genetic disorder was completely healed.
Growing up with a non-religious family, it’s easy to take on atheistic beliefs
But everything she believed started changing as she approached her final hours
Riley Courtright says she was diagnosed with vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that weakens the body’s connective tissues. Her particular type was the most dangerous, affecting blood vessels and organs, raising the risk of internal ruptures. Those with the disorder can experience heavy internal bleeding, and apart from “patching it up,” doctors told Riley there’s no known treatment. Patients with this particular type usually have significantly shorter expected life spans.
Riley explained that in an 18-month period, she flatlined twice due to the condition. The first time, she had just been sent back home from the hospital, and the doctors supposedly told her there isn’t much they can do, because “medicine doesn’t beat genetics.” She woke up, feeling like it was her last day, and hearing what she described as a symphony of multiple orchestras, played with instruments that aren’t invented on Earth.
A voice reached out to her, and she was taken on a spiritual journey where her late husband told her it wasn’t yet time for her to get onto that train. She jumped back into consciousness, where her current husband said the same thing, and she was taken back to the hospital and fixed up.
Aaron Burden / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Her spiritual journey awakened a deeper sense of understanding
After her first out-of-body experience, Riley said that passing on is not scary. According to her, it feels like becoming weightless and lying down in a perfectly warm sunpatch. An overwhelming power of love, connection, and understanding hit her, but she was still taken back to Earth. Her health started improving for a little while, but Riley still felt like her days were numbered.
She felt like there was something more she had to do, or someone she had to meet, before she went on. After having spent most of her life a non-believer because of her family, she became convinced that when she flatlined, she was being taken to God, but never quite made it. Because of it, she asked her husband to baptize her, and saw Jesus. She described the vision as “more real than her husband standing in front of her.”
On her second journey, she finally met the Creator in heaven
The approach to Riley’s second passing was similar to the first. She woke up knowing that it was her time to go on. She chose to do it peacefully, at her own home. As she lay in her bed with her eyes closed, she described being shown the creation of Earth, the history of the world, and how far humanity had advanced in science and religion. She saw everything mystical and mythical, and how it could coexist with reality.
When she supposedly flatlined, she was lying in her husband’s lap. That’s when she finally met God. There was no mistaking it. According to Riley, he was the size of the cosmos. To her, it felt like God shared every piece of information that ever existed in the universe.
She walked around the Gardens of Eden, into and through black holes and white holes with him for what felt like years. He even showed her a second Earth he was creating for the people. She struggles to explain it all. While there, she learned that, because of the limits of the human brain, people who visit heaven cannot fully recollect it if they return to their physical bodies.
Paul Zoetemeijer / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
The spiritual revelations brought unexpected physical manifestations
The last thing Riley remembers God telling her was that he’ll heal her. That very moment, she woke up to her husband kissing her, for what he assumed to be the last time. He and the doctors who had arrived were shocked by her sudden awakening. She had supposedly not been showing any signs of life for 50 minutes. She recounts the first breath as the freshest she’d ever taken. Right then and there, she knew she was healed.
When the doctors took her to the hospital for some tests, they concluded that she’d inexplicably become a completely healthy 34-year-old woman. There were no signs of past organ damage, scarring, or internal bleeding. They had nothing to offer her. She felt all better on her own. After months of being fed through a tube, she could now eat on her own. Over the next seven months, she embraced a more fulfilling and active lifestyle, going on hikes, doing yoga, and ballet, all of which could have previously been too dangerous for her.
Zoshua Colah / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Experts attribute vivid visions to possible scientific explanations
Neuroscience is a rapidly evolving and deeply complex field. Many core questions still don’t have clear answers. It is not yet known exactly why or how someone might experience visions before flatlining, or what their purpose might be. Nevertheless, research continues to bring light to possible explanations.
According to a study by Jimo Borjigin and eight other scientists, the brain can show higher activity at the moment of passing. The researchers measured brain wave activity, similar to that of lucid dreaming, in select patients’ final moments. While there’s no clear all-around explanation for the visions that some people experience in such traumatic experiences as nearly passing away, most experts aren’t too keen on writing it all off on an afterlife. Much remains to be uncovered about the human brain.
Watch the full video here
Many people were skeptical when commenting on Riley’s story
Follow Us
