29 October 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, around 15:30 (Sunday afternoon, election day). Before describing the NDE itself, I would like to emphasize that I had been warned in a dream that I would experience something very radical. This was not something that had happened only once in my life. I recall other warning dreams followed by extreme events the next day, including very detailed dreams that pointed to the type of event that would occur the following day, such as the death of a loved one.

In that particular dream during the night of 28–29 October 2006, I was told that the next day I had to go to the gas station on the opposite side of the boulevard and buy myself a tiny red sports car model. I was even given the model to choose — it was a two-door sports car. When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I told my partner was that I had to go to that gas station on the opposite side of the boulevard. No other shop, just that one. I felt that I had to do it. My partner responded that we would definitely go there if it was so important to me, although for no apparent reason, but he suggested doing it later in the day. I agreed, and we went on with our day. We walked towards other places in the neighborhood, had lunch in a Chinese restaurant, and afterwards my partner said, “Now, let’s go buy you that red car.”

We walked along the opposite side of the boulevard towards the gas station. It was deserted — no cars and barely any people around. It was very calm, as it was both Sunday and an election day. We were approaching the crossing with the zebra crossing lines where we should have crossed the boulevard to get to the gas station. We were chatting and were very relaxed. However, for a split second, in my peripheral vision, I saw a small red car approaching rapidly towards us. It was a red Opel Tigra, driven by a young woman who was talking on her mobile phone while driving. I saw her, and I saw that she lost control of her vehicle because she had not realized how close she had driven to the sidewalk. As I said, there were no other cars visible anywhere on the boulevard. At the moment she lost control of the car, the right front wheel touched the curb, bounced off it, and turned the car uncontrollably. At a speed of nearly 70 km/h, the car hit us without any brakes being applied.

I had a second to react. We were so close to the car that there was no possibility of escape, and it all happened in a blink of an eye. I only somehow managed to push my partner behind me, so the car hit me frontally and I served as a buffer between the car and my partner. I do not remember the actual moment of impact, but I remember how the sky started to revolve rapidly. Apparently, I was first flying and then rolling along the ground for nearly 13 meters, but all I remember is the image of the sky.

Then the revolutions slowed down and became like frames in an old movie. One, followed by darkness. Another, followed by darkness. Then the last one, which was static, like a picture. That was apparently the last time I blinked while lying on the ground, and with that last blink I saw the sky. There were no thoughts. It was as if it was not really happening to me, as if I were sitting in a movie theatre watching a film.

The next second, I opened my eyes and found myself in an entirely different world. There were no tunnels or any other transitions — the last blink on Earth, and the next blink in another world. There were no memories of what had happened, nor of my earthly life at all. Yet somehow, even without any memory, I was still fully myself. It was not that I felt peaceful or joyful, or any particular emotion. I felt at home. It was simply calm. I realized that I was somehow simultaneously lying on a very soft surface covered with grass and flowers, while at the same time standing so that I could perceive my surroundings in what seemed to be a 360-degree view, in all directions, including above and below. I could see my own body, and it was the naked body of a young man lying on that soft surface.

With this 360-degree view, I observed the surroundings. It was a field covered with different and very colorful flowers and bushes. On one side, it seemed to be evening, because there was an evening sky above me and towards the horizon. On the other side, there was fog that blurred the horizon in all directions — a golden-like fog, which somehow seemed to be lit from within itself. There were also tiny stars, about the size of insects, floating around, but they were not harmful. It was incredibly beautiful to witness.

Then the situation changed. I was suddenly lying on my back. I could feel soft leaves underneath me touching my body, but I could not see anything else — my sight was directed only upwards towards the sky. The color of that sky was incredibly bright and calming, a hue of blue that I cannot identify despite being a trained artist for 40 years and an art teacher for nearly 25 years. I have never seen that kind of color on Earth anywhere.

A hand appeared on my right side, and I instantly recognized it as the right hand of my mother, who had died three and a half years earlier. Her palm calmly approached my eyes, and I heard her voice saying three times: “Your place is not here.” Her palm lowered as if it was intentionally trying to cover my eyes, and at the moment it touched my face, I felt myself fall. It was more like the sensation of being flushed downwards. I was falling through layers of something that looked like soil and human flesh with tissue. The falling lasted for a very short time.

I suddenly hit the hard ground underneath me with my back. At first, everything was dark, and my physical sensation was that I had to shrink myself in order to re-enter my physical body. The body itself felt too small, like clothes that are too tight and do not allow much movement. The second thing that came was the unbearable pain. There was not a single part of my body that was not screaming in horrific pain. The third thing was that I started hearing the distant voices of people. I heard my partner’s voice; he was crying next to me and begging me to come back.

Then I heard the voices of the medics, and at the moment they picked me up to put me on a stretcher, my vision returned. That happened around 5 o’clock, so I had been lying on the cold ground for nearly one and a half hours before the police arrived and called for a van — not an ambulance — to collect a dead body from the scene of the car crash. I remember the faces of the two orderlies who loaded me into that van. They were sitting next to me in the van and trying to be “helpful”, while it was very obvious that they did not expect someone who had been declared dead to suddenly wake up.

The details concerning the distance I was thrown, the approximate speed of the vehicle, and other circumstances of the accident were not my estimates. After I had recovered sufficiently to walk, we contacted a lawyer in order to pursue a claim against the driver’s insurance. The lawyer obtained the official police report, from which I subsequently learned these details. The accident was also mentioned in the following day’s newspaper, in its report on accidents that had occurred during election day. It stated that a man had died after being hit by a car at the exact location of the accident.