Two Minutes of Eternity – An Extraordinary Near Death Experience | Bo Katzman

When I was in that other world, I saw something like a horizon, and there was a soft glimmer which turned bright. And this glimmer, which I sensed as a light, wasn't just a light but also an energy, an energy of love. And this love was that strong that it shone. Let's take a light bulb, for example. Energy is popped into it, and a thread starts to glow, but this glow is just a by-product. Mr. Katzmann, you've been a successful musician for years with an extensive repertoire ranging from pop to spiritual music. But you're also an author of two books. The first is a biography with the unusual title Two Minutes of Eternity. In this biography you describe a near-death experience which you lived through at the age of 20. What exactly happened at the time? Well, I was a student at the time, studying teaching. I wanted to become a primary teacher. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the 17th of June, a completely clear day, and I was a motorcyclist. So I was saddling my steel horse, so to speak, in order to drive to my seminar. There were two souls in my chest. In other words, the first soul was dedicated to my education and becoming a teacher, and the second soul was telling me, come on, take a break and take a drive around the hills of Ubach. In the end, I chose freedom, but well, I didn't get far. At the time, there was this underpass where the main road was going over and under this main road where you had to drive through a bent tunnel. This always used to be my favorite route. There, I could really lean into the curb with a speed of 80 km per hour, scraping my shoulder at the asphalt. But at that moment, there was a traffic jam at the junction and there were cars lining up along this bent tunnel. But in this bent tunnel, you could also see 4 meters ahead of you, and I was speeding with 80 km per hour and crashed right into one of those American cars. I crashed with full force into the rear of this car, and my motorbike was catapulted under it, taking me with it. And all of a sudden, I was lying there and didn't know what had happened. Why am I looking at this rear axle in front of me, and why is there a roaring engine near me? I was still blearing at full throttle right next to me. The fuel tank was bust, petrol was spilling out of it. I was thinking, if something happens now, I'm going to burn here. Well, it was a horrible moment of panic, and I couldn't breathe. My ribs had been crushed into my lungs by the impact. Everything was broken, my spleen, my liver, everything had turned into a mousse. Well, I wanted to revolt against this fate. At first, I was furious, I couldn't breathe anymore. I was about to suffocate. I was thinking, why me? I'm only 20. Only old people die, why am I supposed to die now? I could feel the final hour was coming, and all the moment of greatest revolt and panic. I calmed down all of a sudden, and I'd say something like a time window opened up, as if time was coming to a standstill. It was a bit like in this Walt Disney movie, Sleeping Beauty, where all the personnel freeze and stay in the same pose for 100 years. That's what it was like. Time just stopped, and I was watching my life. I relived my life again until the present moment. This was split two ways. On one hand, I relived my life once again, I was watching my birth. I experienced my birth, I learned walking, I learned how to swim, I learned reading. All of those things, I experienced it a second time. On the other hand, I was an observer. I was two people, one who lived through it and one who just observed everything. And when I had finished going through my life and settled down for a moment, I felt a loving being in front of me. I can't describe it in a different way. Nobody was there, but I could sense a very strong and loving aura of somebody. And this somebody was communicating with me in thoughts. So, now you've seen it one more time. How would you assess your life? It was friendly, not… And of course, I was honest and responded my honest opinion. Well, I haven't really made the most of those 20 years. I've wasted this gift of life. And I felt something. This may sound strange if I say it like that. But I felt a smile, a loving, forgiving smile. And I was told then, well, this is your opinion, but you're not being assessed or judged for what you've done. It's just experience that counts. It's a collection of experiences. Now you've gathered them and gained an insight. Well, and at that moment, the time window closed. I was back under that car and fainted. I could briefly hear the sirens of the ambulance. Ta-ta-tu-ta. And then I was gone. I just woke up during the surgery lying on the operating table. I was under strong anesthetics. And I wasn't really livable anymore. And all of a sudden I was completely conscious again, meaning I wasn't inside my body anymore. I could sense my body floating from the ceiling. I saw all these people that were busy with me. The surgeon, the anesthetist, the nurses, all of them with their masked faces and I was looking down at myself. I saw myself lying there with my cut open body. At that very moment I saw the doctor frantically yelling, it's just turned off his pump, the heart, it's just turned off his pump, bring me the defibrillator now. So I observed them bringing this device and starting to give me electric shocks. And I was thinking, that's not necessary, for me it's pretty clear that I'm dead. I floated down to the doctor and wanted to grab him by the arm. I said very loudly, professor, you can stop, I'm dead, can't you see? It's okay for me, stop. But I was moving my arm through his body because I didn't have a proper arm anymore. But he didn't hear me. Something that astonished me at that time was the fact that I could sense all the thoughts of the attendees as if it was a loud conversation. I can't really call it hearing, I sensed it. For me, their thoughts were just here, I sensed it. And at that moment I realized that I wasn't a physical human being anymore. Apparently, I had turned into a ghost being. But my consciousness and my consciousness of myself was still there. I could sense things, I could see my body. I existed even outside of my body. Did this profound experience also influence your artistic career in some way? Well, at first, not really. At first, after my recovery, which took a very long time, I suffered from a serious depression because I didn't find my way back into this life. It wasn't like I wanted to kill myself to go back to the other world. We might speak about this at a later point, but I couldn't find my way back into this world. The experience had shaken me that much that I didn't know where I belonged to anymore. And that really… I started a psychological treatment voluntarily for two and a half years. I saw a psychologist and she applied the Freudian method to me, meaning she never asked me anything. She didn't really say anything, but I had to develop everything myself and talk about myself, about my dreams and so on. I got to know me quite well at that time. It really fascinated me at that time. And it took me a while to realize what had happened to me. And it shook me and triggered me to think and research my whole life. How did it occur that a 20-year-old was torn out of his life and his heartbeat just stopped? At the same time, he was still conscious in a different way. I educated myself about medicine. I talked to doctors, priests, pastoral workers. I was looking for answers with the help of several people. And of course, the medical answer is, there's a lightning storm in the brain and endorphins are released which cause hallucinations. But I had to discard this idea because for me, my experiences weren't hallucinations. I'd also been in contact with drugs. I'd already taken LSD. I know what it's like to have hallucinations. And I did not have hallucinations. For me, it was something completely different. For many people who make such experiences, it's hard to talk about them. In 1972, the term near-death experience didn't exist yet. What was it like for you? Did you find people you could talk to about this experience? Well, that was the crux of the matter. I felt so lonely with this experience. At the time, I think Kübler-Ross didn't even exist and Dr. Mooney with this life after death. I don't think the book had been written and there was nobody I could talk to about it. I was also scared to talk to anybody about it because I thought if you tell people, they'll think you're a lunatic. And this experience was magnificent for me. I'd almost want to say holy You hinted that you got even deeper insights of the world on the other side. What else did you experience? At that moment, when I realized that I couldn't achieve anything in the operating theater anymore, I was pulled out of the room by a gentle force. I found myself in something like outer space. I need to describe it in more detail now. I was surrounded by dense fog. And this fog didn't have the same texture as we know it, made out of water drops or whatever. But it was concentrated with knowledge, meaning I was surrounded by mental knowledge and I was a part of it. You've got to imagine it like a drop that is put into the sea. And then this drop becomes part of the sea. And so my small consciousness was fused with general knowledge or rather omniscience. At that moment, I knew when the world was created and when it would end. Everything was there, just everything you could possibly know, and I was a part of it. And the second thing was this timelessness. There wasn't any time. There was no before or after, but something where everything was always there, a state. And for me, that was incredible to see. And the third thing was the famous light, which we might address later. What was it like processing these experiences? When did you start talking about it with somebody and with whom were you able to talk about it? Well, at first I talked to my psychologist about it a few years after the experience or I more or less just talked to myself. I just retold the experience and this wasn't really a conversation but an analysis. An analysis isn't really a conversation in the traditional sense. The first time that I talked about it with people was with a hospital priest. Apparently, I had hinted something to him a while back and he visited me. He invited me to talk about it to death-bound patients in his hospital. And after some hesitation, I agreed and met a bunch of 10, 12, 15 people of all ages. They were teenagers who suffered from leukemia and didn't have much time to live anymore. They were older people, normal 40-year-olds, and they all knew their last moment was about to come. And the first time in my life, it was 8 years after my accident, I told them my story. And it was liberating for me, but also for the attendees who had never heard of something similar before. And at that end, I got up. And all of us were crying and I gave them my hand and told them, See you, but not here. And they were so glad and happy that somebody had come and talked about that topic. And for me, it was liberating as well. I was finally able to get my experience off my chest. In 2015, your book with the title You Are Immortal was released. In the book, you deal with the typical questions of life in great detail. The second title of your book says Why We Live and Die, Suffer and Love. Which answers did you find to those big questions in life? Well, what's driven me these past few years, because I had experienced it, I was certain that consciousness isn't just created by this lump of meat up here, called the brain, but that consciousness exists by itself. It takes a body for some time, gains experiences and leaves it again. I was sure of it. I didn't have to think about it. I understood it. But the one thing that is still keeping me busy is the why. Why do we, mental beings, have to be squeezed into a body for a while and gather experiences in the material world? Why do we have to experience disappointment, get to know the evil, the good, pain, etc.? Why? That's driven me. That's why I started looking around. I engaged myself in every religion. With the Mormons, with Jehovah's Witnesses. I read the Bible back and forth. I studied the Quran. I read psychological books. I've got a room full of books at home. I was looking for answers. Why? And because the natural sciences don't answer any of these questions, the natural sciences mostly deal with the how but not with the why. So I couldn't find any answers there. I had to resort to spiritual and religious works or talk to people from those fields. And I thought about these things a lot by myself as well. Every day I write down my thoughts in my diary. And every time one of my questions was answered, a new question would pop up and this was dragged on for 40 years, during which time I was writing this book. At the same time, this book is just one stop of my research. So if you ask me, tell me a short answer regarding the why, I feel overburdened. I can't just put it into a few words. That's why I wrote a book. But of course, it's about us gathering experiences in order to… Maybe I'll just have to start somewhere else. Let's go back to this experience of light, which people also call near-death experience. Well, when I was in that other world, I saw something like a horizon and there was a soft glimmer which turned bright. And this glimmer, which I sensed as a light, wasn't just a light but also an energy, an energy of love. And this love was that strong that it shone. Let's take a light bulb for example. Energy is popped into it and a thread starts to glow, but this glow is just a by-product. The real energy is transferred into thermal energy and this is actually the main product of a light bulb and the thread begins to glow. It's a by-product. This light came second but it was primarily thermal energy. It was an energy that overflowed me with such energy of love that I couldn't grasp it. It was like… I'll try to explain it like that. When somebody is in love, they sit opposite the beloved being and they are completely uncritical. They just see this immaculate being and this energy of love which radiates from them is returned. And that is what I felt at the time but at a much higher rate. I'd say a million times more than what I was used to on earth or the experience on earth. And I almost burst and I knew if I get closer to this source of love, I won't be able to take in this energy. My vessel is too small to collect all this love. I'm not an electrician but maybe I could explain it like that. If you pump a huge power surge into a 25 watt light bulb, it'll burst because it can't take it. But if you were to pump the same power surge into a 5000 watt bulb, it's gonna be collected and it starts to glow. At the time, I realized that the sense of life is very simple. It's about learning about love and increasing the inner vessel so more love can be absorbed. And the more love you can absorb, meaning the more energy your bulb can cope with, the bigger and brighter it's gonna be and the closer you'll get to this primary source of love. I don't want to say the word that pops up in all of our heads now. I don't want to give this light a name. But I feel that the sense of life is to learn about love and to extend one's vessel of love in order to get closer to this source of love energy. But that is a beautiful answer and short. Maybe I express myself a bit laboriously. But well, Martin Luther used to say, if a person's heart is full, his mouth will overflow. And when I speak about this topic, my heart is so full that my mouth overflows. You are a spiritually oriented person. What's your relationship to traditional religions? Well, my upbringing was strictly Catholic. My parents were very pious. I went to church every Sunday and to confession every Saturday. Sometimes I even made up sins to please the priest because I couldn't think of any. And I was really raised to be strictly devout. And from childhood, I'd always been interested in spiritual stories about religion. There I was told that there is a dear God who loves you and forgives you for all your sins. At the same time, if you don't obey his will and lose track, you'll be thrown into hell fire. And there's also God's watchdog, namely the devil, who bites you and bothers you if you haven't behaved according to God's will. And at that point, I was thinking, is God dear and forgives me or is he evil and a bean counter? The good ones go into the pot and the bad ones go into the crop. How can I understand that? And I couldn't. And I was devastated that I couldn't make sense out of the ambivalence. And at the time, I used to pray to the dear God during my evening prayer. Please, dear God, let me attain assurance what this is all about. And then there was also Jesus Christ who wasn't really human, but God disguised as a man and he absolved all our sins. But he didn't really absolve us because hell is still in existence. Then they would say that you just need to believe and that he is the savior and then you're out of this vicious cycle and you'll surely go to heaven. And this whole mess was so inexplicable to me that I didn't even know my head from my toes. And then I actually received this gift. I got reassurance. I don't need to believe that there is life after death. I don't even need to believe anymore that there is a source of love. Well, you can call it God if you wish. I've got to say that I've distanced myself from religion, from religions that turn faith into a business, so to speak. I'm still very… I'm not a religious person. I'm a certain person. But I've distanced myself from the mechanisms and the dogmas and rules. And especially from what was drilled into me. Because religions build bridges between the earthly and the spiritual. And I've noticed that this is often exploited in an earthly way. They assert power by wanting to take power over souls. They turn the topic life after death into a business, faith, God, etc. And I don't agree with that anymore. I understand. People who've gained spiritual experiences often report of their impression that life is backed by a higher guidance. In one of your interviews, you mention a remarkable encounter. It's about the repairs of a watch where you just escaped an accident. Do you think that there is really more behind such coincidences? That there is really something like guidance? What did you experience at the time? Well, the story was like this. My watch was broken and so I brought it to a watchmaker in the city of Baal. A few days later, I picked it up again. I drove into town by car and went to the underground car park at the train station. Then I took the elevator to the main road and strolled to the watch shop. There, the watchmaker said, Mr. Katzmann, your watch is running smoothly again. There you go. Thank you. I answered and put it on. I looked at the watch and noticed that the second hand had just stopped. The watch displayed the time but it wasn't working. So I said, hang on, the watch isn't working. Give it to me, let's have a look. She gave it back to me and retorted, Well, but I put in a new battery, I did everything, just have a look, it's running. Indeed it is working, I exclaimed. I put it back on, I looked at it and thought, Hold on, it stopped again. This time she saw it too and said, Oh yes, it has stopped, just give it to me for a moment. I took it off and handed it over to the lady. She went to her back room to do something and at the same time her phone was ringing. She glanced at the watch and mumbled, But it's working, I heard her say. After about two minutes she came back, handed me the watch and said, I'm sorry, but it is working. Would you put it on for me? I put it back on again and lo and behold the watch was working. I replied, I'll take it with me and if there's a problem I'll just come back. I walked back to the elevator and realized that the door was gone. The door had caved in. Just two minutes before, a tractor carrying an excavator had come around a corner. The excavator had come loose and the tractor together with the excavator had crashed into the elevator door and pushed it in. If I had been in this elevator two minutes earlier, this excavator would have crushed me. I would have fallen down the shaft and wouldn't have been able to have this chat with you now. This experience made me think. Two minutes earlier and the watch had just stopped and saved me from that fate. And so I was thinking, what happened there? Because the watch was working, it wasn't broken, it had just stopped caused by some powers, I don't know. And that's why I assume that we are not just left by ourselves but that we're part of an exchange with the spiritual world which also consists of beings. There are beings, our deceased parents, all those people who haven't gone through an incarnation yet. They do exist and those can whichever influence us. This is an exciting topic. How does the influence of the spiritual world on the physical world work? Have you dealt with this topic? Yes, of course. I've got… There are many ways to connect which are not hard but soft. There are the spiritual ones, the ones connected to the soul, dreams, thoughts, intuition, emotions, all these levels which cannot be grasped. They are in an intermediate station, the intermediate station between the earthly and the spiritual. And especially me as an artist. I live from intuition and I've often made the experience that there's really something coming in. For example, I woke up in my bed in the early hours of 2.30 am and heard a tune. I mumbled this tune into my mobile phone and recorded it, then turned it off. The next day I listened to the tune and thought, well, that's a nice tune. I reworked it and put together a song and this song was released as part of a CD. Nothing works without intuition, even inventors. It's called to invent or in German to find, to discover. I'm convinced and I've made the experience that everything that can be known is already saved somewhere. It is stored and available in a mental pool and we just tap into this pool with a small tube, suck something out, transfer it into our brains and translate it into matter. It's like building a house, for example. A house does not build itself. There's got to be an idea first and this idea has to be blueprinted before you can turn it into a house, right? It's already been written in the Bible that in the beginning there was the word, namely the Logos, I was told. And Logos doesn't just mean word, but Logos is also a thought, an idea, an imagination. At the beginning there was also the idea and that's why I'm convinced that matter was not at the beginning but the idea of a material world came first and this idea was realized somehow. That's why I'm more of a spiritualist and not a materialist. There are numerous esoteric tendencies that can be found in between the traditional religions which disregard empirical knowledge and the natural science which mostly disregard the topic of consciousness. What do you think about esotericism? Well, esotericism is actually the field that deals with the invisible, meaning not with the non-material world. That's why I don't have anything against esotericism. A religion is more or less also an esoteric discipline. One tries to deal with the mental and spiritual and integrate these into the earthly world. Esotericism does nothing else than that. One thing that bothers me when it comes to esotericism is not esotericism itself but its followers. Some of them are too dreamy and infatuated and don't stick to the facts anymore. That's why esotericism doesn't have the best reputation. It's because of its customers. But talking about myself, I've dealt with esotericism as well. For example, Thorwald Dethlefsen, a psychologist and esoteric, has impressed and influenced me a lot. And I would recommend everybody to read his works, such as Fate as Chance, Illness as a Path. Well, I like esotericism. What would you recommend to people who are looking for something deeper in life but don't want to follow anyone in order to become more aware? One thing they shouldn't do is refuse life but to live more consciously. Question every experience. Like myself, I had this experience where I saw the light. I know what to expect after death, but I haven't become a saint because of it. I still make the same embarrassing mistakes and do things that are selfish. That's the way things are in this world. But I'm still a sinner, if you want to call it that. But I think one should always question the aim of life. What I've learned is to increase the vessel of love. Of all the things that can happen in life, and if you've got the choice, always choose the more loving instead of the selfish option. That's more or less all I can give you as an advice. But it's not always easy to do that. You've called yourself a sinner by passing. Sin. What does that mean to you? Well, that's also one of those mysterious words I didn't really understand as a child and started to question. According to Thorwald Detlefsen, the word sin in German is an old version of the word special, or being out of the norm. A sin is an Absonderung, separation. But from what? It's a separation from the principle of love. If you commit a sin, then you remove yourself from the principle of love. And there's just one type of sin which can appear in various forms. It's lovelessness. It appears in the form of envy. Well, we don't need to list all of them, but they're all those things that don't align with love. These types of sin can be activities or thoughts, meaning they remove oneself from the principle of love. And it's not about eating too much cake, that's not a sin. It might make you gain weight, but it's not a sin. And that's what softened a bit today. But to cut a long story short, being sinful means acting loveless in one form or another. And that's what I still do sometimes. I act loveless as well. It's not about being envious. That's one sin I've surpassed, but there are many more where I can still learn and improve. Many people who foster spiritual or holistic ideas say that the essence in life is taking responsibility and having a sense of responsibility. Do you think that the term of responsibility is essential as well? Yes, definitely. There are many types of responsibility, namely first and foremost, taking responsibility for oneself and one's life. There are many people who hand over the responsibility of their own life and say, well, that's something that happened to me. It's not my fault, I'm not responsible. But I say that your fate is your fate. You're responsible for your own destiny. That's where it starts. And your fate concerns you. Whatever happens to you, you're the one concerned. If we're talking about a car accident or whatever, your fate is always personal and concerns you. And that's what one has to deal with and to feel responsible for oneself and one's life. And of course, this involves the surroundings as well. They have to be taken into consideration, such as one's family, one's friends, the environment, etc. We can influence our own fate and therefore we've also got responsibility. This self-responsibility might also be a great gift we're born with. Yes, and many people don't accept this. And just think about all those insurances. It's all nonsense. Insurance does not exist. You cannot be insured. To be insured means nothing else than being insured that nothing will happen to me. Ha-ha. What kind of a life is that when nothing happens? Things should happen in life. One should learn from life. Final destiny affects all of us. You can't insure yourself against that. Mr. Katzmann, thank you very much for sharing your world of experiences and your new insights. I wish you lots of success in the future. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much for this interview.