I Can Exist Without a Body | Sabine Mehne

I have experienced that I can exist without a body, that my body, the earthly garment, which is now becoming weak and causing so many problems, is only a part of life. But the crucial thing is the essence of consciousness and to experience and know that consciousness is something that cannot die. Ms. Mene, we have already talked about your impressive near-death experience for Thanatos TV, including the live preview. You have written several books on the subject and many people are familiar with your story and your attitude. Today we are talking to each other again because you, I think I can openly state this at the beginning of our conversation, you do not expect to live much longer. Thank you for your willingness to talk about your experiences once again. But first, how are you feeling? That is a very nice question, because I have been able to learn through the diversity of experiences. My life is a celebration and every day is my favorite guest. I wrote a poem. It's coming true now. When my strength is waning and I'm in a lot of pain, every day is still my favorite guest. It is interesting for me to observe what happens when the body changes and the spirit grows in size. I experience this as a great gift and also as an extraordinarily exciting time of life, if not the most exciting time of all. But you only realize that when you look at your life from behind. Mental clarity is important for you. Painkillers, as they are often administered today, cannot always be reconciled with this. How do you deal with this? Rilke is a good role model for me. I have to be honest. I read in a book about him that he had a similar illness to mine at the time and he is also said to have refused morphine because he wanted to live as consciously as possible during this time. Rilke is a great source for me not only because of his wonderful literary texts, but also because of his attitude. Through my near-death experience, I have learned to use the power I gained from the experience for this phase. You experienced a special closeness to life with your NDE. Does this experience still have a special significance in your current phase of life? Perhaps this is the moment today when I would like to draw the essence of the near-death experience once again. You can talk about such an experience in different ways. At the very beginning, you talk about it in amazement like a child learning to walk until you finally realize what you have experienced. Later, you learn to tell the story in such a way that the listener can better understand what it is all about. It's like squeezing a lemon. The last drops can be the most valuable. The essence of my near-death experience is simple. I have experienced that I can exist without a body, that my body, the earthly garment that is now weakening and causing so many problems, is only a part of life. But the crucial thing is the essence of consciousness and to experience and know that consciousness is something that cannot die. That is actually the quintessential aha-moment. I also realized, we live in a society, in a world, where we have so much. We have a body, we have a life, we have a car, we have a child, we have a spouse. Yes, of course, we have that. But at the same time, we don't have that. Everything is just borrowed. For me, my body is also the equipment I was given for this earthly path. In the beginning, my body had a certain shape. It changed in the different phases of life. And now, at the end, it also has a certain shape. But I am not this body. I am the consciousness. And that is what I also am now, even though I am still living in this body. For me, this is an essential realization from my near-death experience. Another key for me is that in the near-death experience, I recognized myself with absolute sharpness and clarity. But what do I recognize? I recognize what I am, how I am, within a large framework. And the most precious part of my near-death experience was the realization that I am good, just as I am. You have to savor that. Because we constantly want to redefine ourselves. This is how we want to be, or this is how we do not want to be. I experienced this too. The zeitgeist is constantly suggesting to us, you are what you want to be. You just need the right attitude. You need to transform your beliefs. Yes, that is all well and good. It helps. I have done all that too. But the bottom line is that I am something for which there are no words. It reminds me of the statement, I am bigger than I am. I have outgrown myself. At some point, we agree to call this dimension God, something that is greater than everything that humans and nature are. In the near-death experience, I saw myself reflected in this light, in this incomprehensible thing, and that is my true nature. That is all of me. Have you become more satisfied? Happier? Yes, very happy. And maybe it's also my happiness that makes my days nice now. Near-death experiences often describe the spiritual worlds they have experienced as their real home. Has your longing to return home become stronger recently? That is a valuable question. It's no longer a longing. It is now the deep conviction that I am already what we call the afterlife. I have really stopped separating. For me, there is no longer the question of the afterlife. But for me, the afterlife is just as earthly as this world is otherworldly. For me, there is only one life. Death is like a birth. Death and birth are two boundary points. And every person has to cross these boundary points. At the beginning of earthly life, we forget that, we don't remember that. We all have the certainty that we can somehow make it. We are so equipped when we come into the world. I read a statistic in the newspaper the other day. What is more dangerous? Getting on an airplane, for example, is much less dangerous than being born. Being born is a risk. You have to endure a lot and be equipped to get through it alive. And it's the same in the end. We are equipped with a supply. But we can only use it when the time comes. I can already taste these provisions and realize that they taste delicious. We are really well provided for. There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of this threshold. Everything we need will come. You are a strong advocate of self-determined dying. How do you prepare for the transition, for the transformation? I am already experiencing this transformation every day. I live in a wonderful certainty. For me, dying means that my earthly garment, my body, no longer functions. At some point, my heart stops beating. And that is like a switch that is flipped. And then I am again without a body, this pure consciousness. Which I am now too, but still bound here in this earthly shell. In this phase that I am in now, I can honestly say, you go through great sadness, there is no question about that. I also have to say goodbye to earthly things. I have many dear people around me who I am saying goodbye to inside. It hurts a lot, I have to be honest. But I have also learned to be less judgmental. What is pain and what is happiness? Let's stop judging all the time. Everything is good the way it is. It is right. And I can also distance myself from feelings that hurt me. Or I can confront the opposite and poof, it doesn't hurt so much anymore. It's not the facts themselves that are the problem, but how we deal with them, how we evaluate them. I was able to learn to become more generous, more relaxed, freer and more diverse on this evaluation scale and to use what is good for me. If I have a day when I cry, then I cry that day. The next day I am totally relieved and happy again. Just as nature shows us. There is not only sunshine. What is, is right and good. I have plenty of practice in looking at life in this way. Maybe you can achieve a certain level of mastery. Many people are not so good at dealing with it. We have created an image of death that always brings sadness. I am someone who says, stop it. Why don't you see if dying can also be easy, good and beautiful? And I believe it can, if we allow it to be. Do you think that as a near-death-experiencer you find it easier to prepare for death than people without such an experience? I would say yes. Of course it depends on what the individual near-death-experiencer makes of their experience. There are many ways to integrate the experience into your life. The nice thing was, I worked a lot with Pim van Lommel and he linked the near-death-experience with a different concept. He said, first and foremost, it is a life-experience. The near-death-experience shows us our own life as if in a burning glass. The so-called life-review is a good example. When we have such an experience, we are shown all facets once again with clarity, speed and brutal honesty and have to take a stand on them. This is perhaps comparable, and many theologians I have spoken to have told me this, to the last judgment. Maybe that's where the term comes from. You are mercilessly confronted with yourself. I experienced that in 1995. In the meantime, I was allowed to live for a while and often asked myself the question, am I living differently now? Am I no longer making certain mistakes that were shown to me in the life-review? Couldn't I do a lot of things differently? I came to the conclusion, I can't. We can have the highest expectations of earthly life, but we remain human. And as humans, we have to make mistakes, again and again. There is no other way. Not even after a near-death-experience. We do ourselves no favors if we exaggerate the near-death-experience, if we build it up to great expectations. A near-death-experiencer must now live unconditional love always and every day. No, we can't do that, because we are humans. That's why I have now taken the life-review to heart. I have gone through all the situations that I have experienced since my last near-death-experience. I have felt them all, thought them through and forgiven myself and others. I wanted to do that in the earthly world. I wanted to consciously forgive some people in a direct exchange. For others, where this was not possible, I did it on a spiritual level. And in these many quiet hours, when I'm lying down or unable to sleep, I have done a kind of reconciliation work in advance. I think many people do this, even without a near-death-experience, when they sense that the end is approaching. That was very exciting and helpful, because it helps people to say goodbye and because it helps relatives to deal with the situation differently. The exciting question now is, what will it be like when I stand on the threshold again? Will I have a life-review again? Will all the images come back? And how will they come back? I think that's an incredibly beautiful consideration. You can see it as a task to deal with when you know that time is running out. Or for example, when parents know that their child is going to die, then you could consider, can you also use this life-review as a practical life-aid? Look at all the stages and see, where did you do it well? Where did you not do it well? Where can you still do better? Where can you still do something well and forgive yourself or the other person? I think that makes it easier to go. At least that would be my wish, to focus more on this topic as a help. The dying process often has a lot to do with fear and pain. How do you deal with this? I come back to the initial question of whether I believe that near-death-experiencers die differently or prepare themselves differently. Yes, I think so. At least I can say that about myself. The important thing is that I'm not afraid. But what does it mean not to be afraid? It's so easy to say that. And then, when you're in a lot of pain, your body often reacts with its own program. Then we little people stand there and are inclined to call emergency doctors for help. I have learned for myself, and I'm incredibly grateful for this, also because of my medical history, that people can endure a lot. We really can endure an incredible amount. We are physically built in such a way that we can even withstand the stresses and strains of war, life in a trench. My father was in the war. We can endure a lot. Even modern medicine sometimes imposes incomprehensible things on us. And people can endure that. The question is whether they want to. Yes, the question is whether they want to. One has to think about it carefully. I don't want that anymore. I've had enough high-performance medicine. And I don't want it anymore. That's my decision. I'm now at a point where I'm actually quite well looked after. Of course I get painkillers. A very good medicine is medical cannabis, which I've been getting for two years now. And it really is a wonderful natural product that can be purified for medical purposes and can be prepared individually for each person in a very specific dosage. It really helps me a lot. I have made another observation that I am very, very happy about, that I already know from the time of the bone marrow transplant. I spent most of my time outside my body. This switching, am I completely in my body? Am I outside? Am I half in? When am I even fully in my body? I find that an exciting question. I believe that we never live completely in this house, in this earthly garment, but that it is both. During the many sleepless nights in which I do my transformation work, I practice transforming the pain. And you can really practice that. How many chronically ill people have to practice this? Otherwise, at some point, you become permanently sedated. You can practice it. And I practice it in my own way by realizing again that I can leave my body, or my physical form, which has now become so small and puny here, expands. It has become full of holes, so to speak. I described it in one of my books, like an air mattress with holes in it. When you blow it up, it always goes… That's how I'm experiencing it again now. My earthly garment is changing. I can often spread out and stretch. And I think that's wonderful. I have this spot up here where my fontanelle used to be. And now that I have such short hair, I often put my hand up here. It has an extraordinarily calming but also stimulating effect. Being so close to the place where I will leave the body. That's how I experience it. I'm quite sure I will climb out there again. I will open this little door and go out. And that is so precious. I realize, at this moment, I have the impression that I have a golden string. I'm like a kite. I'm flying in the air. But I also know for sure that I can catch myself again. It's not yet time for me to let go of this string. Are these experiences where you actually see your body from above? Yes. Where you experience yourself outside your body? Yes. And I can also decide how far I fly. I am cautious with these exercises. Because I know that if you let go of the string, you will fly. That was very impressive during my near-death experience. It wouldn't have taken much. And it would have gone whoosh. But I came back. This string, is it a symbolic image? Or do you see it too? I can see it too. I have the gift, and I'm refining it again now, of painting incredibly beautiful pictures. I experience it as a very creative process. For example, I visited an old lady in an old people's home for a few years. We sometimes had very valuable conversations, in which she showed me a piece of her inner reality. Then she kept quiet again, because she was afraid to talk about it. Those were moments when we were very close. I already feel very old, because since my bone marrow transplant, I count the years I've lived twice. It really is a miracle for me that I've survived all this and have been able to do so many wonderful things. I'm now 65 years old, but counting double, I'm 91. I experience this tenderness of the advanced age too. That's why it's so important for me to talk about it. I would find it so helpful if this knowledge were to fall on open ears in psychology, for example. Because then psychologists could actually train this ability with pain patients or the dying. That does exist. There are institutions where the out-of-body perspective is trained. I have also met many people who train out-of-body perspective very diligently and who keep saying to me, Oh, I still can't do it. I don't think we can do it if we train too doggedly. We have to bring in a certain lightness. We have to see it as a gift, as an opportunity that is given to us. We have to open ourselves up to it and then see what happens. You have always spoken openly about your near-death experience. You have organized series of events, given interviews and cultivated contacts with the scientific community. You even took part in a cabaret program on the subject of near-death experiences. So you have certainly contributed a great deal to removing the taboo surrounding the subject of death. Have you developed a kind of overall picture over time, through your contacts with other near-death experiences and scientists? Why do near-death experiences occur at all? What could be the meaning behind it? I have often asked myself this question. Why do near-death experiences actually happen? I believe they happen to show us that we as humanity have the potential to lead a good life if we only want to. That is, if we really dare to love more and change more. If we dare to be less afraid of death. And if I have understood this correctly, then the description of the near-death experience is also documented in the first literary work of mankind ever, in the so-called Epic of Gilgamesh. If I have understood correctly, this is the first literary document and it describes a near-death experience in the language of the time. So it must have a deeper meaning for humanity. I often ask myself at the moment, why haven't we as humanity learned anything from the many crises, from all the violence, from the constant wars? Why do we simply not manage to live in love and equality among ourselves as human beings? Why can't we do that? I believe we can't do it because earthly life remains trapped in duality. Because we live in either-or mode. And because we don't manage to recognize this real preciousness from these experiences and from everything that religion actually wants to teach us. Namely, that there is no duality. But somehow, people can't think in this way. They cannot grasp it properly for themselves. So, near-death experiences as a signpost to show potential. To show potential and live it. We have nothing to lose but our lives. And if I live in the idea that there is life after life, that life is a cycle and not a linear process, then I can also be courageous. I think that's what I did. Today I would say, people dare to really love more. I was thinking about this potential the other day. There are so many near-death experiences today. Modern medicine produces one near-death experience after another. The question, of course, is whether people remember. You need help to really develop the potential because near-death experiencers are often still labeled as crazy. The mainstream still says, near-death experiences, oh well… Do you have the impression that this is the case? Either you are seen as a bit spooky or you are living in an esoteric transfiguration and generalization. But this metaphysical, transcendental aspect of near-death experiences generally receives too little attention. Actually, this would also be the field of religion. But here we are arguing again. Which religion is better? If there is one reality, then it applies to everyone and always. Then we don't need to argue. I then had the thought, why not, for example, provide every politician with a near-death experiencer as a conscience advisor on a secret mission who asks, can you really reconcile what you are deciding with your conscience? I know that's a daring thought, but I can be a little daring now. So what would be different if this potential were really allowed to be used in our society? In the cultures where the shamans dance, call the souls and ingest certain substances to expand consciousness, this is also done. There is the tribal elder who is then consulted. Why don't we do this in our enlightened modern society? We can do anything. We can fly to the moon. We can do so much. But we can't really tame the fear of death. We still sit at deathbeds and think, what is happening here? And we can't live love. What is actually wrong with us humans in the 21st century? What do we actually still need to understand? That sometimes makes me very thoughtful. In addition, as you mentioned earlier, people with near-death-experience are also flawed. Perhaps it would not always be the best people who come to the politician's side as advisors. Well, yes, but we have to be honest. There was also a time when the near-death-experience was incredibly glorified. I was also caught up in this vortex. It's a modern-day hero's journey. You've survived a bad situation, had a near-death-experience and come back to life. But if I really want to make something of it, then it involves hard work. You can't forget that. I learned a nice phrase. A near-death-experience saves us 10 years of meditation. That may be true. There are many people who sit on their meditation cushion for 10 years with the sole aim of experiencing this so-called enlightenment. And they don't experience it. If I am really vaccinated with enlightenment through a near-death-experience, then I still have to let the vaccination take effect. And that is hard work. Doesn't NDE vaccinate you with enlightenment? Yes, you get vaccinated with enlightenment, if you are really honest. And being honest is so difficult. We live in relationships. We are social beings. And we have learned to only ever expect the other person to do what we think they can handle. This honesty, talking openly about near-death-experiences, is something sacred. It needs space. There is so much gossip. Between the everyday banalities, a quick spirit to go, a near-death-experience light, I didn't do a near-death cabaret for no reason. I took the mickey out of myself. But when I really look at the core of everything, and I recognize that in the life review, then I see the light within me. Wow. And that is really almost overwhelming. Of course, I had to get back to life first. I have to get well. I have three small children to look after. There is a whole life with all the trimmings. And yet, I never lost that moment of having recognized the light within me. But daring to really show it, that's even more challenging. I've also found that some people are overwhelmed when they experience so much love. They can't stand it. Then I withdraw again and live it within myself. Near-death-experiences deal with their experiences in very different ways. Some are even satisfied with a materialistic explanation. Do you think that if near-death-experiences are really honest with themselves, they would have to be convinced of an immaterial reality, of life after death? I think so. I strongly believe that. And I was allowed to do that in the last years, when I was active in public life. I believe that very strongly. And I felt that time and again in recent years, when I have worked in public. That people have opened up to me in a way that I have been told things, asked questions, revealed things that have made me totally happy. But that have also shocked me. That people don't dare to really say certain things. But the moment they felt they could trust me, something opened up. You know, the crucial question is, where are we after death? That is the key question. I talk to a lot of young people, especially now, who know that they have to die. I have had a lot of contact recently with people who have lost children. It's the worst thing you can imagine, losing a child. Where are our dead? I always say, there is a visible and an invisible realm. At some point, the invisible realm no longer has a language, and yet is still there. A drop of water is sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. Sometimes steam, sometimes mist. Nature offers us many metaphors. Where are the dead? Where is man after he has left his body? That is the central question. I can say, they are always there. They are not gone, they are just invisible. I was in contact with Dada Peng. We both dealt with the subject of death in our art. He said it was very easy for him, because he also has a lot to do with young people. Life is like running a marathon. We come into the world and we all have one goal. We have to die. That is our goal. Some run faster, others take a little longer. But we are all responsible for how we train and what support we get for this marathon. But the goal is the same for everyone. He simply calls death Jimmy. He has given it a different word to make it more light-hearted, especially when dealing with children or young people. An 18-year-old who has to die knows that too. The children know they have to die, but they don't tell their parents because they want to protect them in their insane pain. The children know it, everyone knows it, and anyone who can't believe it should sit by the deathbeds, that's where you can feel it. In the end, we are all the same. Whether we are a big world star, whether we are politicians, whether we die in a slum, we are all the same. It's as simple as that. And maybe Jimmy is just a staging post. Yes, what do we know? Do you think that there are areas of social life such as hospice work and education, in which near-death experiences and the knowledge gained from them should play a much greater role? Yes, I'm convinced of that. That would be a great wish that I could express here. I would like to see the essential knowledge gained from the near-death experience taken into account even more in hospice work, in palliative medicine, and in dying in general, that it is not just about alleviating physical pain, it's also about the question how can we deal with this spiritual area and with the hope that people need in an objective, loving and neutral way. I think one way is simple. We work as collectors. We simply collect these tales and stories and never tire of telling them again and again. Hilde Dommen said a very beautiful sentence that has often stayed with me. Don't get tired and quietly, like a bird, reach out to the miracle. When dying, we can simply sit there, not get tired and hold out our love to the dying person again and again. That is all we can do. Let's just keep doing it and dare to do it more and more, a little more gently and not in extremes, not too scientifically and also not too spiritually or esoterically exaggerated, just completely normal and simple. That is the miracle when we sit at the deathbed. The dying opened the eyes of the living and the living closed the eyes of the dying. So just sit by the beds and see what you see and what you feel. Young people can do that too. We can always do that. We are free. Perhaps we should broaden the concept of the near-death experience a little and use the term transcendental experience so that we allow this mystical dimension more into our everyday lives. Because I have found that young people are very interested in these topics right now. Young people are so fed up. They have everything material, but they lack these topics. Philosophers speak of a metaphysical homelessness. But humanity's hunger is still great, especially in youth, at school, during confirmation and also in adulthood. I have been to a lot of schools and spoken to young people, including parents. Parents are often unable to do justice to these issues, even if they want to. Because young people in this phase are simply looking for and longing for a dimension of thinking that is often regulated. This transformation, this expansion of human consciousness is, I believe, a basic human need. Why do people take drugs? They certainly don't just take them to calm themselves down. They also take them to expand their consciousness. If this dimension is given more space as something that is taken for granted in grief work, in youth work, in schools, in politics, in society, I would be so happy if we dared to do this more in the 21st century. And if I was able to contribute to this with my work, then I am very, very grateful and can happily say that my task has now been fulfilled. You have now placed many of your personal initiatives in other hands. You have initiated the continuation of your educational work. What is next for you personally? Now I have another wish that only recently came up, that I would like to visit my mother again. My mother is 95. My aunt is 96. They really are very old people. My mother is now as frail as a baby. It's so touching to talk to her on the phone, but she's so far away. I didn't think I would have the confidence to make such a journey again. But now I've been thinking, how can I still do it? And there was a solution. There's always a solution. I am now being driven to my mother's house in a wish van. She lives 400 km away. I realized that a circle is closing. It's really, really nice to be able to be close to her physically as well as inwardly. Our daughter is also coming with her partner. I now experience this once again as a very, very nice gift. Ms. Mene, I wish you all the best for whatever comes next. Thank you for the interview. Thank you very much. You too. Thank you very much.