Ingrid Honkala has a PhD in Marine Science, spent years working for NASA and the US Navy, and also claims to have died three times. She’d like to talk about what she saw.
The first time happened when Honkala was two years old. She fell into an icy water tank at home while the housekeeper was in another room. Her mother, who had just left for a new job, inexplicably turned around and came back—arriving just in time to pull her daughter out and resuscitate her. Honkala says that’s not a coincidence. From wherever her consciousness had gone during those few minutes, she believes she spotted her mother walking away and somehow communicated the urgency of the situation. When she later described what she’d seen to her mother, the details matched.
“I remember recognizing her and thinking ‘that’s my mom,’” Honkala told Jam Press, reported via the New York Post. “At that moment, there seemed to be a form of communication between us, not through spoken words, but through awareness.”
A Woman Who Worked With NASA Says She Died Three Times and Came Back With Answers
What she experienced in that water tank set the tone for what would follow twice more—once after a motorcycle accident at 25, and again at 52 when her blood pressure dropped during surgery. Each time, the same thing. The fear dissolved, the body fell away, and what remained felt like something she describes as pure consciousness. “It felt like entering a deeper layer of reality that exists beyond our physical senses,” she said. “In that state, consciousness felt vast, intelligent, and interconnected.”
Honkala, now 55 and based in Bogotá, Colombia, has written about her experiences in her book “Dying To See The Light.” She’s careful to frame all of this not as a rejection of science but as an extension of it. The near-death experiences, she says, are actually what drove her toward a scientific career in the first place. “I wanted to understand the nature of reality through observation and research,” she said. Her conclusion, after decades of both: “Science and spirituality may not necessarily be in conflict—they may simply be exploring the same mystery from different perspectives.”
Skeptics will point to research suggesting near-death experiences are neurological events, possibly the brain’s way of cushioning its own shutdown. That’s a reasonable position. Honkala’s counter is harder to dismiss outright, though—her mother’s corroboration of what a two-year-old claimed to have witnessed from outside her own body is either a remarkable coincidence or something that deserves more than a “that’s weird.”
“Death does not feel like the end of existence,” Honkala said. “It feels more like a transition in the continuum of consciousness.” She’s said it three times now, in a manner of speaking. She’s said it three times now, in a manner of speaking. Make of that what you will.
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