NASA scientist who 'died three times' claims she saw exact same thing every time

A NASA scientist who says she’s died three times claims to have seen the exact same afterlife on every occasion. Ingrid Honkala, 55, said she has had three near death experiences at the ages of two, 25, and 52. The first near death experience occurred when she fell into a tank of icy water at home, the second occurred during a motorcycle accident, and the third when her blood pressure dropped during surgery. However, for Ingrid, who later went onto earn a PhD in Marine Science and work for NASA and the US Navy , it was the first experience, when Ingrid was just two, that had an incredibly profound impact on her. She described how, as she fell into the water, that instead of panicking, she felt a calmness come over her. Ingrid, from Bogota, Colombia , explained: “Instead of fear, a deep calm came over me. The panic disappeared and was replaced by an overwhelming sense of peace and stillness. It felt as if my awareness separated from my body. My next memories are not of the physical world , but of an expanded state of awareness. “I remember seeing my small body floating lifeless in the water. At that moment, I no longer felt like a child in a body but like pure consciousness, a field of awareness and light. "There was no sense of time, no fear, and no thoughts. Instead, there was a deep knowing that everything was interconnected. I felt completely unified with life itself, as if the boundaries that normally define who we are had dissolved. It felt like being immersed in a vast intelligence filled with love, clarity, and peace.” Ingrid went on to add that in that moment she also felt like she was able to communicate with her mother several blocks away, something that got her mother to turn around. She explained: “Even though I was only two years old, that experience left a profound imprint on my consciousness. During the experience, my awareness seemed to move beyond my body. I remember seeing my mother several blocks away from our home as she was walking to her first day at a new job. “I remember recognising her and thinking ‘that’s my mum’. At that moment there seemed to be a form of communication between us, not through spoken words, but through awareness.” Ingrid later said that when she discussed the incident with her mother years later, she said their memories matched exactly. She added: “When she arrived, she found my body in the water tank where I had drowned. “The maid who was supposed to be watching us was in another room listening to the radio and had no idea what had happened.” Incredibly, Ingrid claims she has had two more near-death experiences since – a motorcycle crash when she was 25 in a motorcycle crash and when her blood pressure suddenly dropped during surgery aged 52. Each time, she says, she returned to the same peaceful state. A major side effect of Ingrid’s experiences was that she doesn’t fear death and that she views it as something that isn’t too far away from life itself. Instead, it i a different place of understanding and that as she grew older she had encounters with what she called ‘Beings of Light’ that talked to her, but not through spoken language. She said: “From that moment forward, I no longer feared death. The experience showed me that what we call the afterlife did not feel like a distant place at all. Instead, it felt like entering a deeper layer of reality that exists beyond our physical senses. In that state, consciousness felt vast, intelligent, and interconnected. “To me, the experience suggested that consciousness may not be produced solely by the brain – it may be something more fundamental. As I grew older, I continued to have unusual spiritual experiences, including encounters with what I later described as Beings of Light, luminous presences that communicated through awareness rather than spoken language.” Ingrid has in part attributed these experiences to taking her towards a career in science. She explained: “In many ways, my experiences also led me toward science. I wanted to understand the nature of reality through observation and research. “For many years I focused almost entirely on my scientific career and rarely spoke publicly about my spiritual experiences. Over time, however, I came to see that science and spirituality may not necessarily be in conflict - they may simply be exploring the same mystery from different perspectives.” Although some sceptics have argued that Ingrid’s experiences may have been in response to her body going through some stressful scenarios, she said what happened to her was far deeper. She said: “These experiences transformed my understanding of life itself. Instead of seeing ourselves as isolated individuals struggling to survive, I began to understand that we may be expressions of consciousness experiencing life through a physical form. “From that perspective, death does not feel like the end of existence, it feels more like a transition in the continuum of consciousness. Through these experiences I also came to feel that, at the deepest level, life never truly ends, consciousness continues.”