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00:00 What really happens after we die? Such is life, it would seem as though we can never truly know
00:05 until we've actually passed away. However, there are some people that are still alive today in the
00:10 belief that they have clear evidence of what will happen next. This is Unveiled, and today we're
00:16 taking a closer look at real stories that prove life after death. Do you need the big questions
00:23 answered? Are you constantly curious? Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:28 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content! When it comes to the prospect of life
00:33 after death, everyone has an opinion. But in general, we tend to view the problem from one
00:38 of two angles; in a spiritual sense or a scientific one, and it's quite rare that those two meet.
00:44 Every so often, though, they do come together, and the result is an intriguing and captivating
00:48 portrayal of what it really means to die. Dr. Mary Neal is a qualified spinal surgeon. She's
00:55 also a devout Christian, and she claims to have truly "come back from the dead." She has written
01:00 two books about what happened to her, given countless interviews, delivered a TED Talk,
01:05 and featured as part of a Netflix series, Surviving Death. For many, her experiences rank among the
01:10 surest evidence out there that perhaps death isn't the end. Her story starts in 1999, along an
01:16 isolated stretch of river in Chile, South America. Neal had been kayaking as part of a group when she
01:22 got into trouble, got pinned under the water, and was separated from everyone else. Seconds turned
01:27 to minutes, but she was still entirely submerged. And Neal says that her physical body changed
01:33 color as she actually died. She says it was 30 minutes between when she was first submerged and
01:38 when she eventually received CPR. And yet, she lived to tell the tale. Initially, when she regained
01:44 consciousness, Neal recalls how those who had been trying to save her, the others in her kayaking
01:49 group, were shocked. So much had happened, and so much time had passed, that no one thought she'd
01:55 make it. And yet, she did. And what she experienced in the time in between would ultimately shape her
02:01 from that point forward. Neal claims to have ascended to a place that she calls "heaven".
02:06 She recalls there being an apparent path leading the way, that it was as though her surroundings
02:11 were woven with love, and that she quickly encountered various spiritual beings. There
02:16 was an indescribable feeling of energy and color. She says that she held a conversation with Jesus
02:22 Christ, and wholly felt as though she had "returned home". So much so, that Neal didn't actually want
02:28 to be sent back to her body on Earth. In interviews, she's explained that although she has a
02:33 family whom she loves, she only returned here because she had to, because the spiritual beings
02:39 that she met insisted that it wasn't her time yet. Given the choice, she'd have stayed. That's how
02:44 apparently good this other place was. Meanwhile, Neal remembers being able to witness all that was
02:50 happening to her physical body while she drowned beneath the surface of the Chilean River. She had
02:55 turned purple and bloated, but was still trapped right up until her seeming spiritual essence
03:00 returned to the scene. Then, her body was freed, and somewhat miraculously, was floated downriver
03:06 towards the rest of her group. Now was when they could recover her from the water and begin CPR,
03:11 before eventually bringing her back to life. But the apparent miracles didn't end there.
03:16 In her books, and again during interviews and speeches, Neal tells of how two young Chilean
03:22 men appeared as soon as she was brought back around. This in itself was incredible, given
03:26 that she and the rest of the kayakers were now in an extremely isolated location, on the side of the
03:32 river surrounded by dense bamboo forest, and miles away from the nearest towns and even roads. It
03:38 should have been highly unlikely to meet anyone at any time, let alone meeting exactly who you
03:43 needed precisely when you needed them. Neal says that the two men loaded her body onto one of the
03:48 kayaks and helped carry her away. One even happened to have a machete on them to cut through the
03:54 thicket. Still, when they reached the road, the odds should really have remained against them.
03:59 Neal had just been revived from literally drowning. She also had multiple broken bones.
04:04 Her body had been put through an intense, incomparable ordeal, and she was in urgent
04:08 need of medical attention. It was unfathomably fortunate, then, that she and the group
04:13 transporting her happened across an ambulance parked at the side of the road at just that moment.
04:18 Again, they were otherwise stranded in the middle of nowhere, so it was immensely lucky that this
04:22 ambulance was there. Some might call it a godsend, while Neal herself has before referred to the two
04:28 Chilean men as angels. From this point, Neal was successfully taken to a hospital, where she spent
04:34 weeks before recording a full recovery. Having been under the water and deprived of oxygen for
04:39 so long, all predictions were that she should have sustained major brain damage, but in reality,
04:44 she didn't suffer anything like that. According to her testimony, she had certainly died,
04:49 but she came back unscathed and, if anything, was changed for the better.
04:54 In 2018, Neal presented a TED Talk explaining how death brings context to life. In it,
05:00 she refers back to an experience from her childhood, when she was sent to a summer camp,
05:04 but despite all of the many happy memories she made there, she was glad to return to her family
05:09 home once the camp had ended. For Neal, ever since her near- or after-death experience,
05:14 this is much like how she has come to view life in general, as though, at the end of life,
05:19 we're all set to return back to some higher, spiritual, more comfortable place. In the
05:24 meantime, there are memories to be made, and as Neal directly attests to, there are challenges
05:29 to be faced, because there's one final and somewhat unsettling element to her story;
05:34 the seemingly foreseen early death of her eldest son. At some point during her transcendental
05:39 experience, while her body was still stuck at the bottom of the river, Neal says that she learned
05:45 that her oldest son would die. Upon returning to this life, this was the one part she reportedly
05:50 didn't reveal to anyone else. Of course, she had hoped that it would somehow change over time,
05:56 and that her son would survive. However, around a decade after what happened in Chile,
06:00 her son did die in a car accident. So, what do you think of the case of Dr. Mary Neal? As her
06:06 public profile has risen in recent years, there are many who have cast doubt over the claims that
06:11 she has made. Perhaps significantly, there's also a more recent message below her official
06:16 TED Talk upload on YouTube; a note from TED which reads "We've flagged this talk because it appears
06:23 to fall outside TEDx's curational guidelines. This talk only represents the speaker's personal
06:29 experiences." Of course, one counter-argument asks, can the experience of death ever be anything
06:36 other than a personal experience? That talking about death arguably has to be this way, because
06:41 there's no other way to make sense of it. Again, what do you think? Today, Neal is certainly more
06:47 well-known as a successful author writing about her near-death experience than as the specialist
06:51 surgeon that she had initially trained to be. Her life headed in an all-new direction after
06:55 that fateful trip to South America. As such, she often refers back to her previous mindset
07:01 as a way of suggesting that she understands how her claims could be questioned or dismissed by
07:06 some, perhaps even most, people. But for those who do follow and believe what she says, the
07:11 consistency of her story is often widely commented on. The key parts have never really changed or
07:16 been embellished, and given that she had been with others when the kayaking incident happened,
07:21 there seemingly are people and witnesses who can confirm her account… or at least the parts of
07:25 it that happened down here on Earth. What really happens after we die? If you're prepared to
07:30 accept Mary Neal's experience, then there's some kind of heightened state, bathed in love,
07:36 waiting for us when our time runs out. A walk with God? Perhaps. An ascension to heaven?
07:41 Apparently so. But if you find yourself there and your time actually hasn't run out,
07:46 you're sent back, with just a little bit more life to lead.
07:49 What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments,
07:54 check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for
07:59 our latest content.