June 17, 2025 • 39 mins
He was pulled beneath a speeding train… and awakened to something beyond this world.
David Ditchfield was saying goodbye to a friend when his coat became trapped in the closing doors of a train. He was dragged under the moving cars, suffering massive trauma and blood loss. As surgeons fought to save his life, David left his body—and entered another realm entirely.
In his near-death experience, David encountered guides who enveloped him in peace, love, and a sense of cosmic belonging. When he returned, everything had changed. Despite having no formal training in art or music, he began composing symphonies and painting vivid works inspired by what he saw on the other side.
This episode explores the mystery of where creativity comes from, and how a brush with death can awaken something extraordinary within us.
Story producer: Kate Sweeney.
For more on David and his symphony, you can read his book, “Shine On: The Remarkable Story Of How I Fell Under A Speeding Train, Journeyed To The Afterlife, And The Astonishing Proof I Brought Back With Me”
Or visit David’s Website, and check out his social medial links:
David on Instagram
David on Threads
David on YouTube
David on Facebook
David on SoundCloud
David on X
Warning: This series contains graphic descriptions of trauma, violence, abuse, and other content that may not be suitable for certain listeners.
* If you have a transformative experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures,
an iHeart podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
In two thousand and six, I had a freak accident.
I was pulled under the wheels of a speeding train,
and as the surgeon's thought to save me, I had
a profound out of body experience. I take myself back
to that realm where time did not exist. For the
first time in my life, I was complete, and I
was in the present moment.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Something more powerful than me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Was at force that was at save me, that take
and all I could think was, I've got to share
this with everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Everyone needs to know about this.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous account
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:16):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up well in the Midlands of the UK
and I had a very happy upbringing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Them.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was in a really good place, to be honest
with you. My family was good, and I felt really
good about the world, and all that was about to
change when I started at the state school.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
We call it comprehensive school over here.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And that's really because I'd got learning difficulties inasmuch as
I'm dyslexic, and I was never actually diagnosed with dyslexia,
and so once I got into that system within the school,
I was immediately sort of seen as being sort of
(02:18):
like a not only a slow learner, but like I
wasn't interested, you know, that I got no interested in learning,
which is completely untrue. You know, I wanted to learn
as much as I could about life. So that was
kind of like a blueprint really for the rest of
well for a long time, you know, into my adult
years that I felt like a failure and I felt
(02:39):
like trouble, and it hit me hard throughout my teens
and so into my late teens, I suddenly decided that
I wanted to go out and enjoy myself and party
dislike everyone else, I'm sure, but I kind of took
(03:02):
it slightly to the next degree, you know, and that
carried on throughout my twenties, so I moved to London.
You know, I figured that London was going to be
the land of opportunity. So I thought, it's not working
for me here where I'd grown up. And I did
fall into some really interesting circles of friends, which was great,
(03:22):
but that became tougher for me in a sense because
most of those friends, well pretty much all of them
were successful in whatever they were doing, and quite a
few of them happened to be working in the music
industry and photography and things like that, and I really
wanted to get in. I tried to keep pushing that
door open, as it were, but nothing ever happened. It
(03:45):
just wasn't working for me either. It was a bit
of a double edged sword because as much as they
were a brilliant bunch of friends to have around me,
it was also like having this mirror again in front
of me, saying, David, you are still a failure. You
were still not even able to succeed at this and
(04:06):
these people are why not. I was picking up work,
you know, sort of like working on construction sites, working
in kitchens, washing up anything I could do to make money,
and I also discovered I wasn't really that good, that
kind of stuff, especially construction work. Anyhow, I started to
(04:26):
think a lot about the past. I started to think
about opportunities that I messed up on, and all I
could feel was absolute despair. I was struggling, and so
I would say, I started to drink to try and
(04:47):
quash this feeling of inadequacy and fear of running out
of money. I was about to lose my apartment. I
remember getting a viction notice coming through the post, and
I spoke to my sister on the phone and she said,
come on stay with us for a few weeks. She
lived out in the countryside with her young family. So
I went up there for a couple of weeks just
to try and get my head around what I was
(05:09):
going to do to be able to live in and
fit into life. This was in two thousand and six.
I don't think I could could have sunk any load
than I had at that point. It was pretty pretty
depressing and frightening as well. There's an interesting story when
(05:36):
I was just going up for a weekend and I
was on the train and there was an elderly couple
sat opposite me, and I remember that particular day, I
was not feeling in a great place, and I didn't
really feel like firing up conversation, but she was really
keen to open up this conversation about the fact that
they were going to see this medium in the town
where my sister lived. And I said, okay. She said, look,
(06:00):
take this flyer. She's really good, and I went, okay.
So I just put it in this flyer in my pocket.
And I remember turning up at my sister's house and
there was a lot of mayhem. The kids were running
around stuff like this. So I said, look, I'm just
going to go and have a drink at the local bar.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I went down.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I went and I sat there and I bought myself
a beer and I opened up this flyer and looked
at it and I thought, do you know what I'm
going to go? And I walked in and it was packed.
And then it got towards the end of the session
and she started pacing around, I remember, and she was
very animated. She was walking backwards and forward. And then
(06:39):
she turned around and she said, gentleman in the blue sweater,
which was me. She said, your life is about to change.
And I thought, you know again, me back then it
was all about you know, I need the money, you know,
I said, it was fantastic. Am I going to win
the lottery?
Speaker 5 (06:58):
What?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
What is it going to change? She said, oh, they're
they're not telling me. She said, just be prepared for
it. It's going to be a very big change, but you
will be protected. And that's what she told me. I
met up with somebody actually, and this was just a
(07:20):
few weeks prior to me going up and staying with
my sister and her family, and I've got this connection
with her. It was just like one of those She
had a grounding effect on me. And when I went
to stay with my family, with my sister's family, that is,
she said, well, I come and hang out with you
for a few days. This is my friend Anna who
(07:42):
i'd met, and I said that, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So she came up.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
To see me and we hung out for a few
days and we had a brilliant time. Then she had
to get back to London. She got an appointment to
get back for so I took her down to the
rail station to see her off. That was the day
that my whole life was about to change. It was
(08:10):
a cold February day in two thousand and six, it's
a bright blue sky that was hardly a claud in
the sky. And we stood there. The train came down
the track. I remember seeing it coming down, and then
I helped her onto the car with her bags and
I gave her her going to kiss say goodbye to her.
(08:32):
We both heard the automatic doors buzzers going, so she
said you'd better get off. I said, yeah, sure, I better,
and I stepped back and it was at that point
that those automatic doors closed on my coat. So I
was wearing like this three quarter length sheepskin coat which
is quite thick in quality, so it jammed right in
(08:53):
there and I just couldn't pull it free, and I
thought this is not good. I yelled out for help,
hoping there would be a guy, and I didn't realize
there was no god working on this actual network. So
I started banging on the windows and carried on corning,
hoping that the driver may be able to see me
through the window or something, you know, But this just
(09:15):
didn't happen. There was only one other guy on the
platform that day, and he was also seeing off his girlfriend,
and I remember he actually turned around to me and
shouted at me, take your coat off, mate, take your
coat off, but it was just too tight. I started
to feel pretty scared. At this point, I could see
(09:37):
my friend Anna. I could see her through the glass
of the car. The look of horror in her eyes
filled me with absolute inevitability that this could be the
end for me. I suddenly felt well. I felt like
I was staring death in the eyes. At that point,
It's like time had stretched. It didn't slow down, it
(09:57):
wasn't like slow emotion, but at times stretched, and I
I thought, how am I going to cope with this?
The train's engine started to rev up and started pulling
out the station, and I heard and felt every gear shift,
and I suddenly lost my footing. Then I was dragged
at great speed along the platform, and then I was
(10:18):
sucked between the edge of the platform. Then I under
the train itself, and I still got this sense of
time stretched, and I just remember saying to myself, relax.
I'd seen this news article a couple of weeks back,
and it came into my thoughts, and it's where a
(10:38):
young infant had been thrown from a burning apartment block
from the third floor, and they said that that infant
survived because because children don't tense up like we do
as adults. So that's what I did. I relaxed my
whole body, and suddenly the train became more like this
mechanical beast as I got sucked down between this gap,
(11:00):
and I'd gone from that moment into what felt like
absolute hell. It was like being thrown into a washing
machine at full spin. But it was violent, and it
was dark, and there was just the smell of oil,
(11:20):
and you know, the sensation the feel of the metal
was really terrifying. And then I was finally thrown down
to the ground in between the tracks.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I was in absolute agony.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The train was still continuing on, and I thought to myself,
it's not over yet. You know, part of the undercarriage
of that train could hit me because it was a
long training. It was still continuing on, and I still
got this sense of time slowly expanding, and I thought
to myself, remember all the double O seven James Bond movies,
(11:57):
or the Indiana Jones movies. What would they do now?
They would put their face right down into the gravel.
So that's what I did. So my face was in
that gravel, and the train eventually moved on, and there
I was in complete agony. I remember seeing my arm
(12:22):
completely ripped it right open as well, and ah, the
pain was just really intense, but I was just so
glad to be alive because I didn't think I was
going to survive this. It still amazes me to this
day that I was so calm at the point of
(12:42):
this whole thing unfolding.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I understand the whole phrase now of ftal flight, but
not only that. I saw a documentary only recently of
this neuroscientist called Dr David Eagleman. Basically, the mine goes
from if you like, the best way he described it
was being if we view day to day life through
a VHS old video camera, then it's like going from
(13:10):
that to super cinematic wide angle film. And that's what
it is. So it's not only visually do you take
everything in, but you're able to hear more, you're able
to think more, and you're able to process exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
How you're going to deal with this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So me as a person, I'm no superhero and I'm
not you know, when things do go wrong in all fense,
I'm not that kind of cool collective person. Normally I'm like,
oh well, no, wow, yeah. Within minutes it felt like
(13:55):
the paramedics arrived, and I remember the doctor in the
back of the ambulance turned around to me and he said, look,
we've just come from a war hospital around the corner.
That's how we were able to get here so quick.
But the hospital is going to save your life is
a twenty five minute drive. And so the sirens went
on and we took off like a rocket down the highway.
(14:18):
We arrived at the hospital and I remember there was
a whole.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Team of nurses and medics and doctors are waiting there.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
They got to work on me, and I knew that
I was losing a lot of blood. I'd see just
how much blood I'd lost on the track. And the
surgeon he was a lovely guy, you know, and he said, look,
your family are here. Would you like to see them
before we wheel you into theater? And I said yeah.
(14:45):
So they came in and obviously all of.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Them were completely shocked and in distressed.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And I was saying to my mom, Mom, I'm so sorry.
It's always me bringing the dramas to this family, isn't it.
It's always me messing up.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Still got that sensation and have been that person and
of course she put her hand out of my mouth.
She said, it's not your fault, it's not your fault,
which it wasn't, of course. Well, then I was keen
to speak to my friend Anna, who I could see,
who were sat at the back, and she came over
and I remember she was just shaking her head from
side to side, and she was saying, I can't believe.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You were alive.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
They actually announced that you were, that you were dead.
I also saw you go under the train. It was
at this point, just before I got whirled into theater,
that I left all the agony that I was in.
I left the drama of the hospital and all the
noise and the Fruessian light in my eyes, and I
(15:46):
was suddenly in a much calmer place. I'd left my body.
I was in a different realm altogether.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
I was.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It felt like a small, darkened space, not like a
foreboding sort of darkness, but a very comforting sort of darkness.
And I felt safe instantly, and I figured that I
was dead. I thought, well, this is it. I didn't
make it, so this is death. I was made to
(16:24):
feel calm in.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
This realm, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I was like suddenly greeted by all these beautiful, pulsating
colors of light all around me, yellows and ambers and
golds and green, and I tried to get my bearings
because I realized I was no longer laid on the
hospital trolley. I was laid on this huge granite rock.
(16:48):
It felt so comfortable to lay on, even though it
was just it was a hard rock. And I realized
by this point I was no longer clothed either. I
was just covered in this really lovely sort of material.
And I felt comforted by this beautiful material that was
covering my body, and there was light reflecting off it,
(17:10):
and it was just like a beautiful light blue.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
It's strange, but I.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Just felt great to be suddenly calm and comfortable. I
laid there for a while, and then I started to
see light coming through my eyelids. There were three symmetrical
grids of white light slowly closing in on me, and
(17:35):
I just couldn't take my gaze away from it. I mean, normally,
in this realm that we live in there, I wouldn't
be able to look into that kind of intense white light,
but I could hear. And the reason I kept looking
into that light. I realized there was a healing energy
coming from this light. There was healing the trauma that
(17:55):
my body had just been through, you know, this horrific accident,
and I felt like it was just slowly calming or the.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Trauma of it all.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Then I felt the presence of somebody near and just
there stood at my feet was a beautiful sort of
androdging this person. I had never seen somebody filled with
such purity and light as this person. But I knew
this person and I couldn't figure where from. And I
actually said that, lad, I said, I know you don't
(18:28):
where do I know you from?
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And this person just.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Kept smiling back at me and didn't say a word.
But that was fine because I felt that this person
was my keeper, if you like. This person was here
to protect me and guide me. And then I felt
the presence of more people either side of me. There
were two female forms and they had their hands slowly
(18:55):
hovering over the contools of my body. They weren't actually
touching my skin, but they would going over the whole
of my contour. The energy that was coming from their
hands was so powerful. It was very very intense, and
it was an energy of love. It was like unconditional love.
(19:19):
They were healing all those years of feeling like a failure.
They were healing all the years of feeling hurt and
fearful about my life. They were taking off one layer
at a time, and they were just getting right down.
And the closer they got to that puristence of my soul,
(19:40):
the lighter I felt. And I'd never felt so complete ever.
I'd always looked for other ways of finding happiness in
my life, but here was happiness in its completeness. I
started to think about my family at this point, because
(20:01):
I thought, well, clearly I didn't make it and I
am dead, so they're going to be even more upset now.
And I wanted to try and see if I could
see them. So I edged my way over the side
of this huge rock and look down.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I was hoping to be.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Able to see them.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I didn't see them at all.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
What I did see was a waterfall, a waterfall of
stars the size of Victoria Falls on Niagara Force. It
was like absolutely vast billions of sparkling stars. It felt
like I was looking through one galaxy into another. I
(20:42):
was there in this universe, our universe, and that connection
I felt with the universe was so powerful, something I'd
never felt throughout the whole of my life. But the
most profound moment of the whole of this experience was
about to happen. That was I felt as I laid there,
(21:03):
this energy of love had suddenly turned like somebody had
turned the dial up, and I felt this energy was
like causing every single molecule of my body to vibray
with love. And I lifted my head slowly, and just
beyond the being of Light who stood there at my
feet still was this huge tunnel of white light that
(21:24):
was slowly closing in on me. It was coming through
the universe, It was coming.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Through the stars.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It was white, it was intense, and it was surrounded
by all these dramatic flames that were slowly circulating around
the edge of that white light. I was then being
told that what I'm looking at here is the source
of all creation. This is God, not God as I'd
(22:00):
believe God would look like, in some kind of human form.
No matter what faith we follow, there's usually some kind
of human form.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
For me.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
From my school books and stuff, it was always the
image of Michaelangelo's God on the Sistine Chapel. But this
wasn't the guy with a long gray beard a tour.
This was just intense white light and the power of
the love that was coming from it just made me
feel so complete and joyful. My head went back once more,
(22:31):
and I remember I was actually laughing with joy. I
had never laughed in the hole of my life. And
it was at this point that I came crashing back
into my body. I was back in the hospital. All
(22:52):
the pain came rushing through every single vein of my
body and muscle and bone. The noise level was like
it fell he was screaming into my ears. Yeah, it
was quite sort of shocked. I was wheeled into the
theater that at that point. So I was under anesthetic
for eight and a half hours with the first operation,
(23:14):
and I woke up in the middle of the night,
and of course a huge part of me was dealing
with with the with the horror of the accident, which
is completely natural, but the main part of me was
more absolutely trying to process this incredible experience that had
happened to me. Because I knew nothing about neo death experiences.
(23:35):
I'd never heard anything about this, and all I could
think was I've got to share this with everybody, everyone
needs to know about this. So I thought, because I'm dyslexic,
I thought that I'm never going to be able to
write about this. I thought, I'm going to paint it.
I'm going to do the painting like the ones the
Renaissance artists did, those big dramatic biblical scenes. That's how
(23:56):
it's got to be, even though I'd done nothing like
this before in my life. The British rail Police had
to do an inquiry on't it because of the nature
of the accidents, and the head of the rail police said, David,
we're still scratching our heads because we don't get it,
because by all our figures, you should be dead, you
should not have survived.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
That we don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We see these kind of these kind of accidents happen
and people never ever survive, and if they do survive,
they come off a heck of a lot worse. So
something more powerful than me was at force that that
was out to save me that take. It took me
a week to tell my parents about it, because them
(24:41):
both being Christian, I thought it's just gonna jar with
their teachings. And when I told them about it, my
mom turned around at the end, and she said, David,
we know and I said, you know, you know you
know about this?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I said, how He.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Said, well, every time we come in to see you,
you've got all these tubes and wires coming out of you.
You know, you're laid there with all the nurses constantly
caring for you, and you're glowing like we've never seen
you glow before, and you're just so positive, and you're
caring for everyone around you, whereas everyone should be caring
(25:20):
for you. And so I said, well, that's amazing. So
I was really pleased anyway that they got it, you know,
because it was important for me. There was no stopping
me from that point onwards, and I was out to
tell as many people as they could. A lot of
synchronicity started to come into my life. And one of
(25:42):
these moments of synchronisty was that a friend of my sisters.
Because I recuperated out my sister's home, you know, they
give me my own room, and so she came in
and saw me and she said, when are you going
to start this painting? And I said, well, you know,
there's not enough space in here, there's not enough light
and all things like this, and she said well, well,
we run a yoga Plartis center and we've got a
(26:03):
spare studio. You can come and do your painting there.
So I said, oh great. I became known as the
artist in the attic and people would come up and
they'd want to see what I was doing. And one
personal that came in, she was a cello player, and
she said, there is a spiritualist church. So I thought right,
and I'd just gone in and it was one of
(26:24):
their church meetings, and at the end of that meeting
got chatting with them and they said, oh, you had
a near death experience. And they said to me at
that very first meeting, they said, look, we do spiritual healing.
And I said great, went kind of come, so I
said on Thursday, So off I went. And in those
healing sessions, a couple of the healers are Claire Warrington,
(26:44):
and they give very small brief messages at the end sometimes,
and each one of them started to say I was
picking up Wagner and Beethoven and Chopin wrote why would
that be?
Speaker 3 (26:56):
And I said, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And then one of them turned around and she said,
they were telling me that you're going to write a
piece of music about your experience. You're near that experience.
I started working on what I thought was going to
be a song about this experience. Nothing was coming, nothing
was happening. Then one afternoon, I was just watching an
(27:18):
old movie on the TV, and then this core progression
suddenly came.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I thought, wow, that's really lovely, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
So I got it down onto this cassette recorder, you know,
went off and made a coffee, came back, played it back.
I thought, this is really beautiful. And I thought, this's
not a song that they're asking me to write. It
needs to be played by an orchestra. So I met
with my friend, the cellist, and we were having coffee
(27:52):
and I told her about what I was up to,
and she said, oh, maybe our orchestra could form it
one day, and laughed, you know, and I thought, yeah,
that would be great. I was self taught, like a
lot of teenagers, you know, I needed to express myself.
(28:14):
Thought what am I going to do in my life?
So I thought, I'm going to join a punk band.
I could probably like a lot of kids that bang
out three corps, but that's all you needed to join
these kind of bands, And those really were my grounding
days for later writing music, which is crazy because I
remember when I met with a conductor with the final score.
(28:37):
He said, David, you don't understand the enormity of writing
a symphony, which is what you've done, even if you've
been to the university and you'd studied it. It's a
huge task and you've done it. He didn't even know.
I can't read or write music. I still can't read
or write music to this day.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
But you know, I was thinking, wow, is this is
this gonna work?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I have no idea. I didn't know whether it's going
to work or not. I remember the conductor lifting his
button as it came down. Those opening chords came, and
they were the opening chords that I'd written that one
afternoon on that cheap little synthesizer. You know, it was
(29:27):
like three dimensional sand.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
It was wah.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And after that first rehearsal, they said to me, oh, look,
would you mind saying a few words to the local
press about your piece?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I said yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So I spoke to the local press on the phone
and they said, hang on, you're the guy who went
under the train, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (29:57):
And I said yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
And then the BBC so we'd like to interview you
at a rehearsal.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I said sure.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
So the concerts sold out two weeks in advance because
of the BBC basically turning it. And it was amazing
because there was no sense of me feeling like the
great I am like, it's like, wow, this is my
big moment. I'm going to be like a huge star.
There's nothing to do with that. All I could think
was Great, We're going to have a full house and
I'm going to everyone's going to be able to and
(30:33):
I'm going to get this.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Story across to even more people.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I remember, just as they started the opening bars, I
saw a dove landed on the stone window sill outside
and I thought, wow, that's that's really beautiful. And I
thought it was just me saw it, but so many
other people in the audience saw it as well. I
(31:12):
very rarely think about where my life would have gone
if I had not had this accident or of this
near death experience. I hardly ever think about the past.
I hardly ever think about the future. Before the accident,
that's all I ever did. I realized when I came
back from that experience that I'd spent so much of
(31:33):
my life, concerned with past mistakes or opportunities, doorways that
I could have gone through that I've messed up on.
I was concerned with the future, especially the point before
the accident, because I was about to be evicted from
my home, from my apartments, I was about to lose everything.
So I was concerned about the future and where my
(31:56):
life was going to go. But I very ay think
about either now. Yes, of course, like I said, I'm
not superhuman, there are times when anxiety get to grip,
But I take myself back to that realm where time
did not exist. For the first time in my life,
I was complete and I was in the present moment,
(32:18):
and I realized that being in the present moment is
the best place to be. So every time that fear
starts to happen, now, you know, especially the world is
you know, is not in a great place at the moment.
So there's there's fear that comes into all of us,
all of us and anxiety. But I just try and
say to myself, look, stop, you're okay where you're sat
(32:39):
at the moment. You're not under threat as it were
at this moment in time, and this is the present moment.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We don't I mean, we don't talk about death.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's the other thing that I found I now find astonishing.
You know that death does not come into our we
don't plan for it. We plan for everything else, birth, marriage,
driving tests, but not death. And I don't think that
we should be sitting around talking about it all the time.
But you know, it's going to happen to us all
it's going to come, and we may as well address
(33:12):
it and then at least take away that fear element
of death, because I firmly believe that death is not
the end for us, that it's only the next stage
of the journey. And that's not me being romantic, it's
absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Welcome back to This is Alive again, joining me for
a conversation about today's story or my other Alive against
story producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brent Day, and
I'm your host, Dan Bush. So, Kate, that story is
harrowing and almost unimaginable, but what comes out of it
with his art and his creating a symphony without any
(34:17):
formal training and just sort of all of the events
surrounding this that point at not only his the precursor,
which is somebody warning him that his life's about to
change a few weeks before this incident, but also afterwards.
What are some of your takeaways from this?
Speaker 6 (34:33):
I mean, yeah, right, like similar to Rodney White, I'm
struck again by the sense of confidence that this experience
opens up with David to take on these new enterprises
painting and composing with no formal training of either. And
I kind of wanted to like even like throw this
back to you, Dan, because you have done extensive reading
(34:55):
about near death experiences. Is this a common thing? Is
this something that happens to folks with these spiritual experiences?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I mean all of the experiences that in the classic
experiences that are noted in some of the more famous
books about near death experiences, where you actually flat line,
there's a consistency across the stories with certain experiences like
a feeling of complete warmth and a and a and
a feeling of of and sometimes they describe a white light,
(35:24):
which we all know about. And then there's other experiences
where they experience, you know, a life review, but there's
there's there's there's consistencies in these stories, which is fascinating.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
That and just sort of you know, as I was saying, before.
I love how the story sort of marries the mystical
and sort of the everyday life experience because we see
here right like earlier in the story, before this happens,
he feels like a failure in life, and he doesn't
realize yet that that's due to the fact that he
(35:57):
has this neurodivergence. In his case, he has a which
by the way, we will see again dun dun duh
later this season when a completely different kind of story.
But in his case, this near death experience sort of
sets off this series of events that helps his perspective
to shift. He sort of takes on these new talents.
(36:20):
And one thing that I love about that is how
he refuses to take the credit for this work that
he produces, or really for anything that happens in his life.
He says, Oh, it's not me, it's me plus my guides,
it's me plus the universe. And I find that really
compelling because I think it's really easy to feel alone,
(36:41):
and I think, especially these days, right it's really easy
for us to live our lives in lots and lots
of solitude, and I think that can put a lot
of pressure on creative endeavors. So to believe in something
you know, whether it's your guides or muses, as artists
have sort of traditionally done for eons, whatever it is,
(37:02):
can be really helpful to kind of take the pressure off.
And in David, I think we kind of see a
really strong example of that, like, oh, it's not me,
it's the universe and who That just feels like a
breath of fresh air.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Next time on a Live Again, we meet Rodney White,
an artist and musician who survived a life altering car
crash in two thousand and eight. He flatlined twice and
required a medically induced coma, during which he had a
near death experience that transformed his life.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
The car that hit me was a Honda City, So
to hit a jeep Cherokee and flip it and then
push it, those are spring speeds. I wouldn't change anything,
because the other side.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Of all of those experiences is.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
This life I'm living right now, and it is.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Our story. Producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
and Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovitchka, Brent
(38:28):
Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thanks to David Ditchfield for
sharing his story. For more about David, visit Shine on
Thestory dot com. Alive Again is a production of iHeartRadio
and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death
(38:48):
experience to share, we'd love to hear your story. Please
email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
That's a l I v E A g A I
N p R O j E C T at gmail
dot com.
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures,
an iHeart podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
In two thousand and six, I had a freak accident.
I was pulled under the wheels of a speeding train,
and as the surgeon's thought to save me, I had
a profound out of body experience. I take myself back
to that realm where time did not exist. For the
first time in my life, I was complete, and I
was in the present moment.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Something more powerful than me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Was at force that was at save me, that take
and all I could think was, I've got to share
this with everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Everyone needs to know about this.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous account
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:16):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up well in the Midlands of the UK
and I had a very happy upbringing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Them.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was in a really good place, to be honest
with you. My family was good, and I felt really
good about the world, and all that was about to
change when I started at the state school.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
We call it comprehensive school over here.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And that's really because I'd got learning difficulties inasmuch as
I'm dyslexic, and I was never actually diagnosed with dyslexia,
and so once I got into that system within the school,
I was immediately sort of seen as being sort of
(02:18):
like a not only a slow learner, but like I
wasn't interested, you know, that I got no interested in learning,
which is completely untrue. You know, I wanted to learn
as much as I could about life. So that was
kind of like a blueprint really for the rest of
well for a long time, you know, into my adult
years that I felt like a failure and I felt
(02:39):
like trouble, and it hit me hard throughout my teens
and so into my late teens, I suddenly decided that
I wanted to go out and enjoy myself and party
dislike everyone else, I'm sure, but I kind of took
(03:02):
it slightly to the next degree, you know, and that
carried on throughout my twenties, so I moved to London.
You know, I figured that London was going to be
the land of opportunity. So I thought, it's not working
for me here where I'd grown up. And I did
fall into some really interesting circles of friends, which was great,
(03:22):
but that became tougher for me in a sense because
most of those friends, well pretty much all of them
were successful in whatever they were doing, and quite a
few of them happened to be working in the music
industry and photography and things like that, and I really
wanted to get in. I tried to keep pushing that
door open, as it were, but nothing ever happened. It
(03:45):
just wasn't working for me either. It was a bit
of a double edged sword because as much as they
were a brilliant bunch of friends to have around me,
it was also like having this mirror again in front
of me, saying, David, you are still a failure. You
were still not even able to succeed at this and
(04:06):
these people are why not. I was picking up work,
you know, sort of like working on construction sites, working
in kitchens, washing up anything I could do to make money,
and I also discovered I wasn't really that good, that
kind of stuff, especially construction work. Anyhow, I started to
(04:26):
think a lot about the past. I started to think
about opportunities that I messed up on, and all I
could feel was absolute despair. I was struggling, and so
I would say, I started to drink to try and
(04:47):
quash this feeling of inadequacy and fear of running out
of money. I was about to lose my apartment. I
remember getting a viction notice coming through the post, and
I spoke to my sister on the phone and she said,
come on stay with us for a few weeks. She
lived out in the countryside with her young family. So
I went up there for a couple of weeks just
to try and get my head around what I was
(05:09):
going to do to be able to live in and
fit into life. This was in two thousand and six.
I don't think I could could have sunk any load
than I had at that point. It was pretty pretty
depressing and frightening as well. There's an interesting story when
(05:36):
I was just going up for a weekend and I
was on the train and there was an elderly couple
sat opposite me, and I remember that particular day, I
was not feeling in a great place, and I didn't
really feel like firing up conversation, but she was really
keen to open up this conversation about the fact that
they were going to see this medium in the town
where my sister lived. And I said, okay. She said, look,
(06:00):
take this flyer. She's really good, and I went, okay.
So I just put it in this flyer in my pocket.
And I remember turning up at my sister's house and
there was a lot of mayhem. The kids were running
around stuff like this. So I said, look, I'm just
going to go and have a drink at the local bar.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I went down.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I went and I sat there and I bought myself
a beer and I opened up this flyer and looked
at it and I thought, do you know what I'm
going to go? And I walked in and it was packed.
And then it got towards the end of the session
and she started pacing around, I remember, and she was
very animated. She was walking backwards and forward. And then
(06:39):
she turned around and she said, gentleman in the blue sweater,
which was me. She said, your life is about to change.
And I thought, you know again, me back then it
was all about you know, I need the money, you know,
I said, it was fantastic. Am I going to win
the lottery?
Speaker 5 (06:58):
What?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
What is it going to change? She said, oh, they're
they're not telling me. She said, just be prepared for
it. It's going to be a very big change, but you
will be protected. And that's what she told me. I
met up with somebody actually, and this was just a
(07:20):
few weeks prior to me going up and staying with
my sister and her family, and I've got this connection
with her. It was just like one of those She
had a grounding effect on me. And when I went
to stay with my family, with my sister's family, that is,
she said, well, I come and hang out with you
for a few days. This is my friend Anna who
(07:42):
i'd met, and I said that, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So she came up.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
To see me and we hung out for a few
days and we had a brilliant time. Then she had
to get back to London. She got an appointment to
get back for so I took her down to the
rail station to see her off. That was the day
that my whole life was about to change. It was
(08:10):
a cold February day in two thousand and six, it's
a bright blue sky that was hardly a claud in
the sky. And we stood there. The train came down
the track. I remember seeing it coming down, and then
I helped her onto the car with her bags and
I gave her her going to kiss say goodbye to her.
(08:32):
We both heard the automatic doors buzzers going, so she
said you'd better get off. I said, yeah, sure, I better,
and I stepped back and it was at that point
that those automatic doors closed on my coat. So I
was wearing like this three quarter length sheepskin coat which
is quite thick in quality, so it jammed right in
(08:53):
there and I just couldn't pull it free, and I
thought this is not good. I yelled out for help,
hoping there would be a guy, and I didn't realize
there was no god working on this actual network. So
I started banging on the windows and carried on corning,
hoping that the driver may be able to see me
through the window or something, you know, But this just
(09:15):
didn't happen. There was only one other guy on the
platform that day, and he was also seeing off his girlfriend,
and I remember he actually turned around to me and
shouted at me, take your coat off, mate, take your
coat off, but it was just too tight. I started
to feel pretty scared. At this point, I could see
(09:37):
my friend Anna. I could see her through the glass
of the car. The look of horror in her eyes
filled me with absolute inevitability that this could be the
end for me. I suddenly felt well. I felt like
I was staring death in the eyes. At that point,
It's like time had stretched. It didn't slow down, it
(09:57):
wasn't like slow emotion, but at times stretched, and I
I thought, how am I going to cope with this?
The train's engine started to rev up and started pulling
out the station, and I heard and felt every gear shift,
and I suddenly lost my footing. Then I was dragged
at great speed along the platform, and then I was
(10:18):
sucked between the edge of the platform. Then I under
the train itself, and I still got this sense of
time stretched, and I just remember saying to myself, relax.
I'd seen this news article a couple of weeks back,
and it came into my thoughts, and it's where a
(10:38):
young infant had been thrown from a burning apartment block
from the third floor, and they said that that infant
survived because because children don't tense up like we do
as adults. So that's what I did. I relaxed my
whole body, and suddenly the train became more like this
mechanical beast as I got sucked down between this gap,
(11:00):
and I'd gone from that moment into what felt like
absolute hell. It was like being thrown into a washing
machine at full spin. But it was violent, and it
was dark, and there was just the smell of oil,
(11:20):
and you know, the sensation the feel of the metal
was really terrifying. And then I was finally thrown down
to the ground in between the tracks.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I was in absolute agony.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The train was still continuing on, and I thought to myself,
it's not over yet. You know, part of the undercarriage
of that train could hit me because it was a
long training. It was still continuing on, and I still
got this sense of time slowly expanding, and I thought
to myself, remember all the double O seven James Bond movies,
(11:57):
or the Indiana Jones movies. What would they do now?
They would put their face right down into the gravel.
So that's what I did. So my face was in
that gravel, and the train eventually moved on, and there
I was in complete agony. I remember seeing my arm
(12:22):
completely ripped it right open as well, and ah, the
pain was just really intense, but I was just so
glad to be alive because I didn't think I was
going to survive this. It still amazes me to this
day that I was so calm at the point of
(12:42):
this whole thing unfolding.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I understand the whole phrase now of ftal flight, but
not only that. I saw a documentary only recently of
this neuroscientist called Dr David Eagleman. Basically, the mine goes
from if you like, the best way he described it
was being if we view day to day life through
a VHS old video camera, then it's like going from
(13:10):
that to super cinematic wide angle film. And that's what
it is. So it's not only visually do you take
everything in, but you're able to hear more, you're able
to think more, and you're able to process exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
How you're going to deal with this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So me as a person, I'm no superhero and I'm
not you know, when things do go wrong in all fense,
I'm not that kind of cool collective person. Normally I'm like,
oh well, no, wow, yeah. Within minutes it felt like
(13:55):
the paramedics arrived, and I remember the doctor in the
back of the ambulance turned around to me and he said, look,
we've just come from a war hospital around the corner.
That's how we were able to get here so quick.
But the hospital is going to save your life is
a twenty five minute drive. And so the sirens went
on and we took off like a rocket down the highway.
(14:18):
We arrived at the hospital and I remember there was
a whole.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Team of nurses and medics and doctors are waiting there.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
They got to work on me, and I knew that
I was losing a lot of blood. I'd see just
how much blood I'd lost on the track. And the
surgeon he was a lovely guy, you know, and he said, look,
your family are here. Would you like to see them
before we wheel you into theater? And I said yeah.
(14:45):
So they came in and obviously all of.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Them were completely shocked and in distressed.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And I was saying to my mom, Mom, I'm so sorry.
It's always me bringing the dramas to this family, isn't it.
It's always me messing up.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Still got that sensation and have been that person and
of course she put her hand out of my mouth.
She said, it's not your fault, it's not your fault,
which it wasn't, of course. Well, then I was keen
to speak to my friend Anna, who I could see,
who were sat at the back, and she came over
and I remember she was just shaking her head from
side to side, and she was saying, I can't believe.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You were alive.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
They actually announced that you were, that you were dead.
I also saw you go under the train. It was
at this point, just before I got whirled into theater,
that I left all the agony that I was in.
I left the drama of the hospital and all the
noise and the Fruessian light in my eyes, and I
(15:46):
was suddenly in a much calmer place. I'd left my body.
I was in a different realm altogether.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
I was.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It felt like a small, darkened space, not like a
foreboding sort of darkness, but a very comforting sort of darkness.
And I felt safe instantly, and I figured that I
was dead. I thought, well, this is it. I didn't
make it, so this is death. I was made to
(16:24):
feel calm in.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
This realm, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I was like suddenly greeted by all these beautiful, pulsating
colors of light all around me, yellows and ambers and
golds and green, and I tried to get my bearings
because I realized I was no longer laid on the
hospital trolley. I was laid on this huge granite rock.
(16:48):
It felt so comfortable to lay on, even though it
was just it was a hard rock. And I realized
by this point I was no longer clothed either. I
was just covered in this really lovely sort of material.
And I felt comforted by this beautiful material that was
covering my body, and there was light reflecting off it,
(17:10):
and it was just like a beautiful light blue.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
It's strange, but I.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Just felt great to be suddenly calm and comfortable. I
laid there for a while, and then I started to
see light coming through my eyelids. There were three symmetrical
grids of white light slowly closing in on me, and
(17:35):
I just couldn't take my gaze away from it. I mean, normally,
in this realm that we live in there, I wouldn't
be able to look into that kind of intense white light,
but I could hear. And the reason I kept looking
into that light. I realized there was a healing energy
coming from this light. There was healing the trauma that
(17:55):
my body had just been through, you know, this horrific accident,
and I felt like it was just slowly calming or the.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Trauma of it all.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Then I felt the presence of somebody near and just
there stood at my feet was a beautiful sort of
androdging this person. I had never seen somebody filled with
such purity and light as this person. But I knew
this person and I couldn't figure where from. And I
actually said that, lad, I said, I know you don't
(18:28):
where do I know you from?
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And this person just.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Kept smiling back at me and didn't say a word.
But that was fine because I felt that this person
was my keeper, if you like. This person was here
to protect me and guide me. And then I felt
the presence of more people either side of me. There
were two female forms and they had their hands slowly
(18:55):
hovering over the contools of my body. They weren't actually
touching my skin, but they would going over the whole
of my contour. The energy that was coming from their
hands was so powerful. It was very very intense, and
it was an energy of love. It was like unconditional love.
(19:19):
They were healing all those years of feeling like a failure.
They were healing all the years of feeling hurt and
fearful about my life. They were taking off one layer
at a time, and they were just getting right down.
And the closer they got to that puristence of my soul,
(19:40):
the lighter I felt. And I'd never felt so complete ever.
I'd always looked for other ways of finding happiness in
my life, but here was happiness in its completeness. I
started to think about my family at this point, because
(20:01):
I thought, well, clearly I didn't make it and I
am dead, so they're going to be even more upset now.
And I wanted to try and see if I could
see them. So I edged my way over the side
of this huge rock and look down.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I was hoping to be.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Able to see them.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I didn't see them at all.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
What I did see was a waterfall, a waterfall of
stars the size of Victoria Falls on Niagara Force. It
was like absolutely vast billions of sparkling stars. It felt
like I was looking through one galaxy into another. I
(20:42):
was there in this universe, our universe, and that connection
I felt with the universe was so powerful, something I'd
never felt throughout the whole of my life. But the
most profound moment of the whole of this experience was
about to happen. That was I felt as I laid there,
(21:03):
this energy of love had suddenly turned like somebody had
turned the dial up, and I felt this energy was
like causing every single molecule of my body to vibray
with love. And I lifted my head slowly, and just
beyond the being of Light who stood there at my
feet still was this huge tunnel of white light that
(21:24):
was slowly closing in on me. It was coming through
the universe, It was coming.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Through the stars.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It was white, it was intense, and it was surrounded
by all these dramatic flames that were slowly circulating around
the edge of that white light. I was then being
told that what I'm looking at here is the source
of all creation. This is God, not God as I'd
(22:00):
believe God would look like, in some kind of human form.
No matter what faith we follow, there's usually some kind
of human form.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
For me.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
From my school books and stuff, it was always the
image of Michaelangelo's God on the Sistine Chapel. But this
wasn't the guy with a long gray beard a tour.
This was just intense white light and the power of
the love that was coming from it just made me
feel so complete and joyful. My head went back once more,
(22:31):
and I remember I was actually laughing with joy. I
had never laughed in the hole of my life. And
it was at this point that I came crashing back
into my body. I was back in the hospital. All
(22:52):
the pain came rushing through every single vein of my
body and muscle and bone. The noise level was like
it fell he was screaming into my ears. Yeah, it
was quite sort of shocked. I was wheeled into the
theater that at that point. So I was under anesthetic
for eight and a half hours with the first operation,
(23:14):
and I woke up in the middle of the night,
and of course a huge part of me was dealing
with with the with the horror of the accident, which
is completely natural, but the main part of me was
more absolutely trying to process this incredible experience that had
happened to me. Because I knew nothing about neo death experiences.
(23:35):
I'd never heard anything about this, and all I could
think was I've got to share this with everybody, everyone
needs to know about this. So I thought, because I'm dyslexic,
I thought that I'm never going to be able to
write about this. I thought, I'm going to paint it.
I'm going to do the painting like the ones the
Renaissance artists did, those big dramatic biblical scenes. That's how
(23:56):
it's got to be, even though I'd done nothing like
this before in my life. The British rail Police had
to do an inquiry on't it because of the nature
of the accidents, and the head of the rail police said, David,
we're still scratching our heads because we don't get it,
because by all our figures, you should be dead, you
should not have survived.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
That we don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We see these kind of these kind of accidents happen
and people never ever survive, and if they do survive,
they come off a heck of a lot worse. So
something more powerful than me was at force that that
was out to save me that take. It took me
a week to tell my parents about it, because them
(24:41):
both being Christian, I thought it's just gonna jar with
their teachings. And when I told them about it, my
mom turned around at the end, and she said, David,
we know and I said, you know, you know you
know about this?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I said, how He.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Said, well, every time we come in to see you,
you've got all these tubes and wires coming out of you.
You know, you're laid there with all the nurses constantly
caring for you, and you're glowing like we've never seen
you glow before, and you're just so positive, and you're
caring for everyone around you, whereas everyone should be caring
(25:20):
for you. And so I said, well, that's amazing. So
I was really pleased anyway that they got it, you know,
because it was important for me. There was no stopping
me from that point onwards, and I was out to
tell as many people as they could. A lot of
synchronicity started to come into my life. And one of
(25:42):
these moments of synchronisty was that a friend of my sisters.
Because I recuperated out my sister's home, you know, they
give me my own room, and so she came in
and saw me and she said, when are you going
to start this painting? And I said, well, you know,
there's not enough space in here, there's not enough light
and all things like this, and she said well, well,
we run a yoga Plartis center and we've got a
(26:03):
spare studio. You can come and do your painting there.
So I said, oh great. I became known as the
artist in the attic and people would come up and
they'd want to see what I was doing. And one
personal that came in, she was a cello player, and
she said, there is a spiritualist church. So I thought right,
and I'd just gone in and it was one of
(26:24):
their church meetings, and at the end of that meeting
got chatting with them and they said, oh, you had
a near death experience. And they said to me at
that very first meeting, they said, look, we do spiritual healing.
And I said great, went kind of come, so I
said on Thursday, So off I went. And in those
healing sessions, a couple of the healers are Claire Warrington,
(26:44):
and they give very small brief messages at the end sometimes,
and each one of them started to say I was
picking up Wagner and Beethoven and Chopin wrote why would
that be?
Speaker 3 (26:56):
And I said, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
And then one of them turned around and she said,
they were telling me that you're going to write a
piece of music about your experience. You're near that experience.
I started working on what I thought was going to
be a song about this experience. Nothing was coming, nothing
was happening. Then one afternoon, I was just watching an
(27:18):
old movie on the TV, and then this core progression
suddenly came.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I thought, wow, that's really lovely, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
So I got it down onto this cassette recorder, you know,
went off and made a coffee, came back, played it back.
I thought, this is really beautiful. And I thought, this's
not a song that they're asking me to write. It
needs to be played by an orchestra. So I met
with my friend, the cellist, and we were having coffee
(27:52):
and I told her about what I was up to,
and she said, oh, maybe our orchestra could form it
one day, and laughed, you know, and I thought, yeah,
that would be great. I was self taught, like a
lot of teenagers, you know, I needed to express myself.
(28:14):
Thought what am I going to do in my life?
So I thought, I'm going to join a punk band.
I could probably like a lot of kids that bang
out three corps, but that's all you needed to join
these kind of bands, And those really were my grounding
days for later writing music, which is crazy because I
remember when I met with a conductor with the final score.
(28:37):
He said, David, you don't understand the enormity of writing
a symphony, which is what you've done, even if you've
been to the university and you'd studied it. It's a
huge task and you've done it. He didn't even know.
I can't read or write music. I still can't read
or write music to this day.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
But you know, I was thinking, wow, is this is
this gonna work?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I have no idea. I didn't know whether it's going
to work or not. I remember the conductor lifting his
button as it came down. Those opening chords came, and
they were the opening chords that I'd written that one
afternoon on that cheap little synthesizer. You know, it was
(29:27):
like three dimensional sand.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
It was wah.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And after that first rehearsal, they said to me, oh, look,
would you mind saying a few words to the local
press about your piece?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I said yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So I spoke to the local press on the phone
and they said, hang on, you're the guy who went
under the train, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (29:57):
And I said yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
And then the BBC so we'd like to interview you
at a rehearsal.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I said sure.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
So the concerts sold out two weeks in advance because
of the BBC basically turning it. And it was amazing
because there was no sense of me feeling like the
great I am like, it's like, wow, this is my
big moment. I'm going to be like a huge star.
There's nothing to do with that. All I could think
was Great, We're going to have a full house and
I'm going to everyone's going to be able to and
(30:33):
I'm going to get this.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Story across to even more people.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I remember, just as they started the opening bars, I
saw a dove landed on the stone window sill outside
and I thought, wow, that's that's really beautiful. And I
thought it was just me saw it, but so many
other people in the audience saw it as well. I
(31:12):
very rarely think about where my life would have gone
if I had not had this accident or of this
near death experience. I hardly ever think about the past.
I hardly ever think about the future. Before the accident,
that's all I ever did. I realized when I came
back from that experience that I'd spent so much of
(31:33):
my life, concerned with past mistakes or opportunities, doorways that
I could have gone through that I've messed up on.
I was concerned with the future, especially the point before
the accident, because I was about to be evicted from
my home, from my apartments, I was about to lose everything.
So I was concerned about the future and where my
(31:56):
life was going to go. But I very ay think
about either now. Yes, of course, like I said, I'm
not superhuman, there are times when anxiety get to grip,
But I take myself back to that realm where time
did not exist. For the first time in my life,
I was complete and I was in the present moment,
(32:18):
and I realized that being in the present moment is
the best place to be. So every time that fear
starts to happen, now, you know, especially the world is
you know, is not in a great place at the moment.
So there's there's fear that comes into all of us,
all of us and anxiety. But I just try and
say to myself, look, stop, you're okay where you're sat
(32:39):
at the moment. You're not under threat as it were
at this moment in time, and this is the present moment.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We don't I mean, we don't talk about death.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's the other thing that I found I now find astonishing.
You know that death does not come into our we
don't plan for it. We plan for everything else, birth, marriage,
driving tests, but not death. And I don't think that
we should be sitting around talking about it all the time.
But you know, it's going to happen to us all
it's going to come, and we may as well address
(33:12):
it and then at least take away that fear element
of death, because I firmly believe that death is not
the end for us, that it's only the next stage
of the journey. And that's not me being romantic, it's
absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Welcome back to This is Alive again, joining me for
a conversation about today's story or my other Alive against
story producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brent Day, and
I'm your host, Dan Bush. So, Kate, that story is
harrowing and almost unimaginable, but what comes out of it
with his art and his creating a symphony without any
(34:17):
formal training and just sort of all of the events
surrounding this that point at not only his the precursor,
which is somebody warning him that his life's about to
change a few weeks before this incident, but also afterwards.
What are some of your takeaways from this?
Speaker 6 (34:33):
I mean, yeah, right, like similar to Rodney White, I'm
struck again by the sense of confidence that this experience
opens up with David to take on these new enterprises
painting and composing with no formal training of either. And
I kind of wanted to like even like throw this
back to you, Dan, because you have done extensive reading
(34:55):
about near death experiences. Is this a common thing? Is
this something that happens to folks with these spiritual experiences?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I mean all of the experiences that in the classic
experiences that are noted in some of the more famous
books about near death experiences, where you actually flat line,
there's a consistency across the stories with certain experiences like
a feeling of complete warmth and a and a and
a feeling of of and sometimes they describe a white light,
(35:24):
which we all know about. And then there's other experiences
where they experience, you know, a life review, but there's
there's there's there's consistencies in these stories, which is fascinating.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
That and just sort of you know, as I was saying, before.
I love how the story sort of marries the mystical
and sort of the everyday life experience because we see
here right like earlier in the story, before this happens,
he feels like a failure in life, and he doesn't
realize yet that that's due to the fact that he
(35:57):
has this neurodivergence. In his case, he has a which
by the way, we will see again dun dun duh
later this season when a completely different kind of story.
But in his case, this near death experience sort of
sets off this series of events that helps his perspective
to shift. He sort of takes on these new talents.
(36:20):
And one thing that I love about that is how
he refuses to take the credit for this work that
he produces, or really for anything that happens in his life.
He says, Oh, it's not me, it's me plus my guides,
it's me plus the universe. And I find that really
compelling because I think it's really easy to feel alone,
(36:41):
and I think, especially these days, right it's really easy
for us to live our lives in lots and lots
of solitude, and I think that can put a lot
of pressure on creative endeavors. So to believe in something
you know, whether it's your guides or muses, as artists
have sort of traditionally done for eons, whatever it is,
(37:02):
can be really helpful to kind of take the pressure off.
And in David, I think we kind of see a
really strong example of that, like, oh, it's not me,
it's the universe and who That just feels like a
breath of fresh air.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Next time on a Live Again, we meet Rodney White,
an artist and musician who survived a life altering car
crash in two thousand and eight. He flatlined twice and
required a medically induced coma, during which he had a
near death experience that transformed his life.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
The car that hit me was a Honda City, So
to hit a jeep Cherokee and flip it and then
push it, those are spring speeds. I wouldn't change anything,
because the other side.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Of all of those experiences is.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
This life I'm living right now, and it is.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Our story. Producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
and Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovitchka, Brent
(38:28):
Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thanks to David Ditchfield for
sharing his story. For more about David, visit Shine on
Thestory dot com. Alive Again is a production of iHeartRadio
and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death
(38:48):
experience to share, we'd love to hear your story. Please
email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
That's a l I v E A g A I
N p R O j E C T at gmail
dot com.
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