'I died for 107 minutes and was put in body-bag – then I saw something insane'

'I died for 107 minutes and was put in body-bag – then I saw something insane' After a medication mishap put him in a coma for three days, weightlifter Vinney Tolman returned to consciousness with a spiritual revelation he'd received in another world A man who was found lying dead on the floor of a restaurant, and placed in a body bag by paramedics, miraculously returned to life with a fascinating story of what lies beyond. Vinney Tolman is believed to have been effectively dead for the better part of an hour before medical attention arrived, and it was only a last-minute check from a newly-qualified paramedic that revealed that he was still clinging to life. What is most astonishing about Vinney’s story, though, is what he experienced in that hour. He describe travelling through space and time to a place bathed in light that “felt home.” Speaking on the Mighty Pursuit podcast, Vinney explains that he and a friend had taken a now-banned bodybuilding supplement and had tried to go and get something to eat after experiencing some worrying side-effects. Feeling even worse after getting to a restaurant, Vinney went into the toilet. He recalled: “I had this feeling that I just want to get out of me what I had just taken. And so I went over to the the sink and right there as I started to step towards the sink, that's when it felt like the whole world spun on me. The next thing I know, I hear this really loud crack, and the crack was either my head hitting the ground or something hitting the sink.” Vinney found himself in a curious state – both unconscious but still somehow aware, as if he were watching his life in a film. He continued: “I felt there was no pain. But I also felt that I was I was in a floating state where I I felt weightless as if nothing was weighing me down at all. not even thoughts or worries or anything, but it felt like a complete reset from from everything that was going on in my life.” His first thought was that he was somehow delirious from the effects of the bodybuilding supplement – but he soon realised it was much more than a drug-induced hallucination. He felt himself floating up and looking down on his own body. “I saw that the neck had actually swollen wider than the jaw, and that there was distinct yellow around the jowls and then really bright purple in the cheeks,” he recalled. Vinney added that he also could see the friend that had gone to the restaurant with him, lying slumped face down in a pool of his own vomit. He went on: “I saw that they had found him. They had called an ambulance to pick him up. They took him away to the closest hospital and he ended up being fine.” Vinney’s body, meanwhile, still lay undiscovered in the restroom. And from his vantage point somewhere above his body, he describes seeing an unearthly “orb” of light coming closer and closer. This glowing object seemed to Vinney like lighting for some sort of film or stage play but he soon began to realise something was wrong. "That's when it started to dawn on me that there was something fishy going on here with the whole experience,” he said. As he continued to look down on the scene, a second team of paramedics arrived to check on him. He went on: “It comes with two two older gentlemen as like veteran medics, one one in his 50s, one in his like late 30s, and then the rookie sitting in the back. “He's maybe 22. And he came sitting in the back of the ambulance in the jump seat. Well, he gets out with the two veterans and they kind of give him orders to grab things and go in and out of the out of the the ambulance for certain things, but they attempted resuscitation. They tried to do CPR, no result. They were putting oxygen into the lungs, no result. They pronounced the body dead on on scene.” He says the two experienced paramedics returned to the ambulance, ordering their junior to “babysit” Vinney’s body in the back of the vehicle. It was at this point, Vinney admits, that his story begins to get harder to believe. He describes how he realised he could read the rookie paramedic’s thoughts. He went on: “I watched the rookie start to glow. He was sitting in the back of the ambulance. He was berating himself in his own mind. He was saying things like, ‘Why didn't you speak up to the other medics? They they think you're a pushover. You did everything they said.’” Feeling as if he should have stood his ground and insisted on more tests, the rookie medic unzipped Vinney’s body-bag and began to check for signs of life. Although the body was cold and initial tests proved negative, something made him press on and eventually he detected a faint pulse. “For him that was enough to completely break protocols,” Vinney said. “He went ahead and he forced oxygen into the lungs. He hooked up a defibrillator. He did the first round, nothing. Second round, he got a single heartbeat, but then nothing. And then the third round, he got a steady heartbeat.” But alongside that life-saving drama, comes an even stranger tale of Vinney’s experiences as he hovered between life and death. Although the paramedic had saved Vinney’s life, he remained in a coma of three days. And when he recovered he regained consciousness with an extraordinary sort of a life after this one. He describes being bathed in a glow of love and acceptance, on a scale he’d never experienced before. He continued: “I turned around to see where it was coming from. I wanted to see how is was possible. How I could feel so loved in a matter of seconds… you could take all the love I ever felt my whole life, add it all together, and it's not even a little eyelash to compared to the sum of this light, the brightness and the the amazingness of it. “And as I turned around, I saw a guy looking like God. That's all I could think of. He was all dressed in white. His clothing flowed. It actually flowed with energy and he was all dressed in white, with a long white beard, long white hair, and he was just smiling at me, but he had this this very distinct thing with his eyes. It felt like he could go in and actually hug your soul. “I could only think, "This has to be God… but as soon as I had that thought, I heard him respond using his thoughts. And he said ‘No, son. I'm not God. And my follow-up was ‘Are you Jesus?’ And he said ‘No, son. I'm not Jesus,’ he said, ‘I'm I'm here to be your guide.’” This mysterious guide showed Vinney to “another world”. “I could see us getting to this space, this planetary-looking space, but it was so much larger than anything we can even conceive,” Vinney went on. This otherworldly environment was filled with love, where even the grass felt like a “long-lost friend”. He says that he came to the realisation that our current understanding of religion and spirituality is wrong, and that there is a simpler, but wider explanation for why we exist. “I woke up to the reality that God is this entire system,” he said. “And bigger than that, God is the love energy in the system for all of us. It's a a true almost liquid like a liquid love like a a fluid flowing love that comes in all forms… and that that creator is very real.” After his extraordinary experience, Vinney described the lessons he had learned in a book, titled "The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back." Explaining that in his visit to this other world he had been shown everything he had done, good or bad, from the perspective of the people around him and concluded: "Every moment that we are not being authentic, it's a moment wasted. And so it's very important for us to be as authentic as we can."