Mary C Neal M.D. | Author of "To Heaven and Back"

Mary C Neal M.D.

Author of "To Heaven and Back"

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Jackson Hole, WY, US

Mary C Neal M.D.
Biography

Dr. Mary Neal is in the unique position of being both a scientist and a woman of deep faith and trust in God. She is a board-certified spinal surgeon who drowned while kayaking on a South American river. During her time under the water, she experienced life after death. She went to heaven, conversed with Jesus, and experienced God's all-encompassing love. She gained an understanding of God's presence and of "good" and "bad". She was returned to Earth with information and expectations regarding some of her undone work, including the sharing of her experience with others and the future death of her young son.

Her experiences transformed her faith into a complete trust that the promises of God are true, underpinning her ability to face challenges and loss with a joyful heart. Her story inspires others to make a similar transformation by seeking God's presence in their own lives.

She was first interviewed on the Dr. Oz show and has since been featured on many national talk and television shows including, FOX & Friends, The Katie (Couric) Show, The Marie (Osmond) show, CNN, the 700 Club, OWN-In Deep Shift, Guideposts, and a number of others.

She has spoken to audiences throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

Her story gives reason to live by faith and trust. It is a story of hope.

Dr. Neal was born and raised in Michigan and graduated from the University of Kentucky before attending the UCLA medical school. She completed her orthopaedic surgery training at the University of Southern California after which she lived in Sweden, Switzerland, and Los Angeles while undergoing 1 1/2 years of specialty training in spinal surgery before becoming the director of spine surgery at USC. Five years later, she left the University for private practice.

She currently lives and works in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she and her family enjoy everything the outdoor world offers, especially all forms of skiing, bicycling, boating, and hiking.

Mary C Neal M.D.
Featured Video

Current: A Near Death Experience

Time 06:57

To Heaven and Back

I am a doctor, well versed in medical science and accustomed to fact-based explanations. Perhaps that’s why, on one level at least, it made me a bit uneasy when patients shared their faith despite my own strong Christian belief.

Maybe it was because I wondered if science and spirituality were truly compatible. I’d try to be open to what my patients said, although I confess I didn’t always understand.

I remember, early in my medical training, treating a 14-year-old girl who was dying. Death, after all, is a definitive medical fact. There’s nothing more scientific than death.
“Don’t be sad,” she told me. “My angels are with me. My parents need to let me go. Please be happy.” I desperately tried to believe her, but I still couldn’t understand the loss of this beautiful child.

Not until one day in the high mountains of Chile when I died myself, not until then did I finally see the light.

My husband, Bill, and I had gone to Chile for a white-water kayaking vacation. Bill, like me, is an orthopedic surgeon and we share a practice, along with a love of outdoor adventure.

We had paddled on some of the roughest rivers in the United States and this was a chance to try our stuff on the wild, untamed waters of the Chilean Andes. We left our four young children at home with our longtime babysitter and traveled to one of the remotest corners of the globe.
Snow-fed rivers tumbled down volcanic slopes, with challenging 10- and 20- foot drops, perfect for us. Our guides were our good friends, Tom and Debbi Long, along with their sons. They’d been hosting white-water trips to Chile for years and knew exactly where to go and what we’d face.

The first boater paddled down the channel on the right. I followed. The current moved swiftly. We headed forward. Suddenly her boat turned at an angle. She was being whipped sideways by the current. Then her boat got lodged between two boulders.
She pushed out of her boat and swam downstream, leaving her kayak pinned between the rocks, blocking that path.
I’m going to have to go left. There was no stopping my momentum. I took a deep breath and plunged 15, 20 feet down the falls. My boat dove straight down. As my boat struck the submerged rocks at the bottom and became pinned, the force of the water was crushing. It ripped the paddle from my hands, the helmet from my head, and the lifejacket from my body.
Still upright, I was pinned. Trapped underwater. I couldn’t paddle. Couldn’t move. The waterfall was so strong it held me down.

My arms flopped in the vicious current. No one could see me in the turbulence, even with Bill’s blazing red jacket.
Pull the chute! I screamed silently. I grasped for the loop. Couldn’t reach it. The force against my arms was too strong. I pushed against the foot braces. Nothing. I tried to jiggle the boat. I desperately raised my head. Fresh air was 8-10 feet above me and I couldn’t reach it.

It was no use. I was stuck. My kayak, my coffin. You’re not in control, I told myself. Just let go.

I thought of Bill and our four kids, our family, our orthopedic practice. God, I prayed, I know you love me and have a plan for me. Thy will be done. And I really meant it.

It was precisely at that instant something shifted in me, like a spiritual jolt. A great calm took me. It was like being a baby rocked and caressed in a mother’s arms. I had this absolutely certain sense that everything would be okay, no matter what happened.

I was overwhelmed by this peace. It completely transcended my panic and dread. I felt myself stop struggling. What about Bill and the children? Would they be all right? Could they survive without me? But that profound reassurance eased all my doubts.

Jesus held me and comforted me, guiding me through a review of many events in my life before the current grabbed me and slowly pulled me out of my kayak. As my knees folded back under me and I was dragged and battered by the river. I observed it clinically, dispassionately, as though I was my own patient: “Your knee bones just broke... You just tore your ligaments...”

And then the strangest thing yet—my soul separated from my body.

I shot above the river into another realm. Fifteen or 20 human spirits rushed forward to welcome me. We hugged and danced. I did not take the time to identify them but I knew that I knew them, even with their outlines blurred. They were sent by God to guide me.

We began to glide along a path. We were going home. My eternal home. My companions could barely contain their joy. Joy at the instant of death. A feeling of absolute love pierced me, a feeling greater and so different from anything I’d ever known.

We were bathed in a light brighter than I had ever seen. I turned and looked down. Below me I glimpsed my body on the riverbank, the shell of an old friend.
Tom and his sons were beside my body. “Breathe, Mary, breathe!” they screamed, giving me CPR. I loved them and didn’t want them to be sad. You could go back for just one breath, I thought. At that, I flew down and took a breath, then instantly went back to my companions.

We traveled a path that led to a great hall, larger and more beautiful than anything I could conceive of, with an immense dome and a central arch built with shimmering gold blocks. I felt my soul gravitate toward the entrance, absorbed by the ever-present radiant love. Heaven. Irresistible paradise. Eternal home. I was flooded with an intense longing to be reunited with God.
Still Tom and his sons kept beckoning. Each time they begged me to take a breath I felt obligated to return quickly to my body and take another breath before continuing my journey. I grew impatient. I need to keep traveling. Let me go.
I understood everything my spiritual companions told me, even though they didn’t speak with their mouths. All our thoughts simply merged. We were right at the archway with the golden bricks. Suddenly they turned to me.

“Not yet,” they said. “It’s not your time to enter. You have more to do on earth and you must go back to your body” Sorrow filled me, as powerful as the great joy had been. I argued my case, yet I knew I would be sent back. To life. I also knew that I would return. Someday. Just not now.
I opened my eyes to see the faces of the Longs staring at me. They were amazed to see me conscious. I’d been without oxygen for 30 minutes. I couldn’t move my legs and assumed I’d broken my back.
The trip up the hillside, my reunion with Bill, and the odyssey that would lead us home was filled with one miracle after another: like the mysterious ambulance that appeared out of nowhere in this remote wilderness and the helpers who assisted us, then disappeared.

I have much work left to do on Earth, but my most important job is to tell this story.
Perhaps it was entrusted to me because I am a doctor and I think in terms of facts and objective knowledge. But there is another world to which we’re called and it is the most true and beautiful we will ever experience. Our eternal home awaits us.

Mary C Neal M.D.
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