Nanci Danison died on the operating table while receiving cancer treatment in 1994.
Ironically, that's when she 'woke up' to the reality of life after death and the nature of reality itself.
Ms Danison, a devout Catholic from Ohio, was suspected of having breast cancer and was on the operating table awaiting a biopsy to confirm the diagnosis.
Danison, now 74, suffered a fatal reaction to the anesthetic.
She told DailyMail.com: ‘My body’s death in 1994 changed everything.
‘My heart went from beating far too fast to not at all.
Danison, then a health lawyer and partner at her practice, described herself as a ‘truth seeker’ - and says that her afterlife experience focused on ‘getting answers’, in much the same way as she did in her job as a lawyer.
She said: ‘I had no idea my body was dying. I did not lose one moment of awareness during my body’s dying and death, or during my own crossing over and afterlife.
'I was conscious throughout and I remember it all.’
Danison said she met beloved friends who had died, but in the form of ‘Light Beings’, and remembered not only her life, but hundreds or thousands of other physical lifetimes.
She absorbed a ‘documentary-type’ history of Earth, showing how religions developed, ‘to explain why my religion had taught me erroneous information about life, death, God, and the afterlife.’
She could see her body lying in the mammography room, and was aware of a ‘Light’.
Danison said that she had a sudden surge of ‘burning questions’ about the nature of reality: ‘What is God? What am I? What does God expect of me? What’s the purpose of life? Where’s heaven? Where’s hell? and What’s the one true religion?’
Danison had attended Catholic schools as a child, followed by a Methodist college, and said she was a ‘devoted spiritual truth seeker’.
But what she found surprised her.
She said: ‘I was angry that I had not learned these answers before I died, as I assumed everyone else on Earth knew this information but me.
She said: ‘I went into the Light, was completely saturated with unconditional love, bliss, and acceptance.’
She said, ‘I literally merged my Energy and being into my five Light Being friends so that I could experience their physical lifetimes.
She says that the feeling was ‘similar to a virtual reality game but much more sophisticated.
She said: ‘The five of us then moved through the Energy field that I call Source and others call God, Yahweh, Allah, the Creator, etc.
'While deeper inside the Source phenomenon’s Energy field, I watched Creation of our universe as the meaning and purpose of life were explained to me by Source itself.’
Danison realized that she was part of the Source, along with every other human being, all interconnected.
She said: ‘You and I are actually Source, simply playing a role similar to how we currently play roles in our dreams.
'I was shown that I had never been separated from Source and was in fact an integrated part of its consciousness and self-awareness that had merely temporarily inhabited a human animal.
'The purpose of life is to allow Source to experience the feelings and sensations of the universe it created comparable to how we experience our dreams through the dream-character version of ourselves.
She said: ‘When our bodies die, we simply wake up from the dream of human life and resume living spiritual life in what we call the afterlife.’
Danison said that her experiences ‘upended her life’ and she began a mission to inform others and to experience unconditional love in her lifetime.
She said: ‘I left my law firm and opened my own solo practice law office. I did not want my efforts to perform my spiritual mission to adversely impact my law partners.
'I tried to be more loving and less career oriented because I learned that love is all that matters.'
She also earned a pilot’s license and became a licensed private detective, and has written several books detailing her experiences.
Danison was gravely ill again in 2001, and had another near-death experience, where she was warned that ‘extremely difficult’ times lay ahead for her, and was warned her body might not be strong enough.
She said that the Light Beings told her that she would face suffering on Earth, but she was determined to stay.
She said: ‘If I stayed in my human host, they said, I will endure constant suffering. Despite what they told me about my future, I chose to stay in human form. I did not want to be a failure at the mission Source gave me, to tell everyone what I learned in the afterlife.’
She said that her message to anyone facing death is simple: to focus on love.
She said: ‘Focus on love—all the people you have loved, all the places you felt loved, all the events that made you joyful, and all the bliss you expect to feel after you cross over.
'You will be going HOME to your true home, to unconditional love and acceptance. Remember that you will leave all the pain and sorrow behind when you go but will take with you all the love and cherished memories.
'I learned that we split ourselves between incarnation and the afterlife. Your loved ones exist not only in human life but also in the afterlife, regardless of whether they have died. You will not be leaving anyone behind.’
