The Night I Died

Tracy Cochran describes a night when she was robbed by three men while walking down a dark street. One held her in a chokehold that can kill in less than twenty seconds. During the chokehold, Tracy had what is described as “conscious dying, or transference of consciousness at the time of death, or even a flash of enlightenment without meditation.” She describes it in exquisite detail as a radiant light that “held everything that is. It was the alpha and omega, the particle and wave, the unifying force of the universe.” She survived, and both immediately and in the years that followed, found that many people did not believe her story. So, she only told it to people she trusted or that were dying. Yet, the experience never grew dim.  She says, “What we really have to share is not any spiritual treasure we imagine we have stored up, but our poverty, our common human situation, our inability to know.”

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