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Athiest who claims she bled to death and entered afterlife for 6 minutes makes bombshell claim about God
A former atheist who claims that she clinically died for six minutes has described the moment that she alleges completely changed her understanding of God.
Dr Anna Stone was 38 when an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy ruptured in 2016, causing catastrophic internal bleeding, leaving her clinically dead.
Anna discusses being clinically dead
While doctors had previously treated the heavy bleeding as an ulcer, the true cause was eventually identified, with Anna diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, in which a pregnancy develops outside the uterus, most commonly inside a fallopian tube.
When the pregnancy ruptured, Stone says she lost a huge amount of blood and her heart stopped as doctors desperately attempted to save her.
Before the incident, she had considered herself an atheist and believed death marked the end of individual consciousness, but the events almost a decade on, have changed her perception of religion.
Woman reveals how life-changing event shaped her understanding of God
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Stone claimed: “I came back with this understanding that God, or source, or whatever you want to call it, is like an ocean.”
According to Stone's interpretation, every human being represents an individual "droplet" containing something divine, before eventually returning to the same collective consciousness after death.
“We're all going to go to the same place at the end,” she claimed.
She believes the divisions people create between themselves, whether based on religion, politics or culture, ultimately have little meaning.
Stone said the experience also fundamentally challenged her previous belief that consciousness simply disappeared when the body died.
Before her near-death experience, she had viewed herself as nothing more than a collection of biological processes.
“I am energy, I'm made of cells, cells decay and die. My energy will transfer back to the Earth in some way, shape, or form, as energy does. But it's not going to be me continuing; it's gonna be the energy of my body feeding plants or something. That made sense to me,” she explained.
After the ectopic pregnancy ruptured, she says she experienced intense pain before suddenly finding herself outside her physical body.
She claims she could see medical staff working on her while doctors eventually called her time of death.
Stone also alleges that she heard a doctor refer to her as a "junkie".
“I didn't care that he had said it, really. I cared more, like, did I hear it? Because that's a problem,” she claimed.
After being revived, Stone questioned the doctor about what she believed she had heard while clinically dead.
“If I'm clinically dead and you called my time a death, I should not have been able to see or hear any of this, right?”
According to Stone, the doctor responded: “I'm sorry, I did. You shouldn't have been able to hear that.”
Although Stone says she was clinically dead for approximately six minutes, she claims her perception of time disappeared during the experience.
She also says she became aware of different versions of herself existing within the same realm.
“I knew there was a two-year-old, six-year-old, 12-year-old, and 16-year-old version of me, all around me. I was existing all at the same time.”
Stone claims she was also confronted with people she had encountered during her life.
“I got to see from their perspective how selfish I was,” she confessed. “I didn't consider the other people that I was interacting with. I was just going through my day, and just doing my thing, and I was not considering other people.”
Stone says she eventually encountered a version of herself from 2016 and heard a presence say “nope”, which she interpreted as meaning that she would not remain in the afterlife.
For her, however, the experience wasn't simply about what she believed she had seen after death.
She says it completely changed how she viewed her own life.
“I knew I was coming back,” Stone said.
“This was just, like, I call it my karmic b***h slap. It was like, Anna, get your s**t together, what are you doing?”
The experience also reportedly had an unexpected impact on her relationship with alcohol.
Stone said she had previously drunk heavily, but after returning home from hospital she attempted to have a drink and experienced something she could not explain.
“I tried to drink alcohol, and it foamed up in my mouth. Instead of drinking it, it turned from liquid into this foam and it was warm,” she revealed.
“I had to spit it out, and I tried a different type of alcohol, same thing. That was the end of it. So I stopped.”
Stone claims the experience didn't end when she left hospital, and subsequently began hearing what she described as an internal voice that appeared to warn her about potentially dangerous situations.
“I started hearing this voice. Not a voice outside of me. It was inside, and it would tell me things, like, don't drink that, or, don't go that way,” she claimed.
Following her near-death experience, Stone went on to earn a PhD in spiritual psychology.
She subsequently began teaching at a continuation school, working with young people whose lives had been affected by trauma and difficult circumstances.
Stone says she has spent the years since 2016 studying the relationship between trauma, consciousness and what she describes as unusual sensitivity.
“I would hope that it means that we are not finite, that we are part of this collective organism of the universe that is, I believe, conscious,” Stone said about her newfound beliefs.
And despite having no clear answer about what may ultimately happen after death, Stone says she now believes there has to be something more than ordinary life.
“I have no idea where it's gonna go, but I think that it is far more. My hope is that this whole existence here is more than just bills and taxes and disappointments and rat racing. I really hope that there's something after that makes all of this worthwhile.”