A Priest and Life After Death | Stefan Lampe's Near Death Experience

can i say it like that but i don't want to be too cautious i'll just say it faith is a crutch for this side of the world it helps us to walk for me it's the christian belief system whether it is catholic or lutheran well i believe these two denominations have so many common features and not many proper differences anyway they never played a big role to me anyway faith is just a walking aid and i won't need this walking aid anymore this crutch that's what i connect with in this experience and i probably wouldn't have been able to live in the same way and i may not have been able to accept it in the same way if i hadn't had this accident [Music] mr lumper you're a catholic priest and you had a near-death experience caused by a car accident several years ago before our interview you wrote very nicely about your experience as a quote as a theologian i'm a man of words but here i've got to capitulate it seems almost impossible to me to describe in those poor words of this side of the world what i have experienced during my car accident which lasted maybe two seconds on this side of the world to me it seemed like experiencing a timeless show please let's give it a try anyway what did you experience at the time this one autumn is fancy it was a car accident and i was driving too fast it happened 20 years ago although it seems to me as if all this happened in the not too distant past it was a sunday evening i'd only been a priest for two years i'd only started working for a little while i drove through a forest it was very cold but it was dry this is why i was driving too fast and fog had settled down on a bridge and suddenly there was a curve and while i was driving 120 kilometers per hour i was thinking i won't make it then the car went it almost shot so to speak directly into the woods lined with spruce trunks and it was a second during which i thought that's it and there wasn't a chance in the world to get out of this i just saw the forest and realized that the car wouldn't react to my actions and the whole thing happened on a very isolated road i think the next car only came 15 minutes later i would have during this one second i wasn't really aware of that i just thought that's it what did you experience eternally then during the second while i was thinking that's it there was a completely different time the time i'm at home a moment of shock it was fear and shock and i don't know what else and then all of a sudden there was something like a complete timelessness that's how i would try to put it into words it had i don't know at all how long this experience lasted for but it didn't have a clock hand anymore i wasn't in the car anymore i can't say that i saw myself from outside of my body but i was definitely not in the car anymore i was in a different place although the word place bothers me because it wasn't a place it was more like an image namely it was like a blanket was taken off me all of a sudden it wasn't like a cozy and warm blanket but a blanket that didn't make me realize how much bigger reality is it gave me the impression that a a very big vastness set in not abruptly but a very gentle one and against and in this vastness there wasn't any time but an experience of presence it might be easier to say what i didn't see actually seeing is not the right word i didn't see any figures but i know there were many figures around me i had the feeling that in this condition in this situation i would have had access to every answer of any questions sometimes i'm annoyed that i didn't ask anything but i already know that i wouldn't have understood it anyway actually what would i have asked it was a condition of which i would say well my normal life is maybe one percent of that special moment that was given to me additionally blick water vastness space light but none you could compare to anything it wasn't a color you'd find in a paint box it is really hard to explain i don't want to read too much into it it was also that as long as it lasted i would say it was timelessly long i couldn't say that it took two or three seconds they probably were just two or three seconds because then i heard a bang the car was completely wrecked i couldn't get out of the driver's door i had to climb out at the back somehow i was okay but when there was the crash i was suddenly drawn back into the car again and i had all those things you'd have at such a moment that's just what i assume it's been my only accident of the type so far at first i thought are you dead now are you injured no you're okay i wasn't injured at all and all of a sudden i could hear the car radio again i also should mention that i was listening to a song while driving too fast i really liked it that's probably what caused me to drive faster and the song was still playing after the accident which means that the whole thing mustn't have taken too long but to identify how long the experience took is impossible in how far did your self-perception change during this experience it was an endless edition of myself meaning me plus endlessly more but it is difficult to explain that's exactly the question i've asked myself many times and it was definitely a personal way of being myself it didn't have anything to do with my occupation or i don't know what else it didn't have anything to do with age either but i could say me but i don't think i said this as i wasn't speaking at that moment i didn't ask anything i wasn't really looking at anything real either i was just astonished and there was one thing i perceived especially that there is a reality that will expect us for sure it was as already mentioned earlier it was like a blanket taken off me and suddenly there was a lot of room it wasn't a built room but more like space a horizon and i know that i was thinking oh i see that's it and once i made an attempt to put all these things into words i did that with the help of an item there are those yardsticks that can be unfolded and i was looking at one i was 31 years old at the time and now i'm 52. we've got a life expectancy of about zero to maybe 80 years old if you're lucky so you take this life expectancy and transfer it onto the yardstick and at that moment i had the feeling that i was looking at the yardstick like that so i had an experience at which point i saw my whole life differently meaning not as a sequence i didn't see a film and there weren't different scenes of my life either but i saw my whole life in front of me it was more the essence of my life from which i didn't even know that it existed it was condensed to one spot everything was overlaid and it was completely good which confused me because i'd never had an impression that everything had been good in my life i also would have had a lot of questions i also noticed that there was a connection in other words if i look at the front of the yardstick then i really just see the one thing that's behind it but it was overlaid and i had the feeling that there was a lot more to see or an essence of all the encounters in my life i also realized that i had made an impact on other people's lives that i had hardly remembered and now i was aware of that and that's what it makes it so difficult to explain i realized all those things at that very moment it wasn't anything that was experienced subsequently it was more like an experience of oh that's what it is and suddenly you realize that everything you've done is stored but that's not the right word either it's suddenly like annulled and your life consists of much more than you realized and i thought what a shame i hadn't known that earlier now it's over so i didn't have the impression that well i had somehow the impression that something completely new is about to start but not in a timely sense i realize that everything is interconnected everything is intertwined and i remember that suddenly i realized where i'd done something wrong and where i'm at enabled something and all this happened within a short moment to be honest i'm still speechless has this assessment of your life up to that point had a lasting effect on the rest of your life yes definitely it didn't happen directly after the experience it took a long time until i was able to face this madness internally because it was very uncomfortable to deal with something that you can't classify with your normal senses but this experience eventually tells me that there isn't anything that is for nothing your actions always cause some kind of response you're connected you're not alone i don't want to read into this too much it was at that moment when i wanted to stop a car he came only 15 minutes after the accident and that's when he saw me i was also recognizably a priest the driver said has there been an accident he thought i was somebody else that i was there to help but i was in the middle of the woods so i was completely shocked this experience was very significant but it takes time to process it takes courage and maybe i needed this inner push that told me come on in order to face the indescribable and give it space it's very hard for me though maybe i'm too german maybe too theoretical or maybe too intellectual to be honest i cannot grasp it properly so although we're just talking about a few seconds they were extremely eventful are there further aspects you can describe i'll try on one hand it seemed absolutely real there's a part of me that tries to tell me that it was the shock it was that part that struggled with this whole experience but there's this inner knowledge in me that tells me that this was not imagined it wasn't anything i had read into because i had heard about these things and wanted to experience them myself [Music] it was an absolute realistic deeply felt and very personal experience on the other hand i had the impression that's what it's going to be like in general so i didn't have the feeling that i was given a somewhat private epiphany but epiphany isn't really the right word here i saw something that is going to happen i'm 100 certain of that i had this experience that is so difficult to put into words so that even the smallest things i do put something in motion and somehow there's the word of connectivity there's nothing i do that wouldn't be connected to anything overall at that moment i had the feeling that i was part of everything well you also asked whether it was myself who had this experience and i said yes it was me plus 99 more i had the feeling i was part of everything that i wasn't bound to one place that i somehow had a share of everything anti-harm well it is very difficult to explain and i am somebody who knows how to put things into words i'm trying but i'm always reaching my limits but what the experience has done to me it's permanent it's made me extremely relaxed i'm sure that if i hadn't had this experience i would have had a different attitude towards things i don't know what it would have been like but i'd imagine i would have been more agitated i am more relaxed and there are certain situations where i say i don't know why these things happen i'm confronted with a lot of suffering in my job well i don't want to say pious empty words like there is a reason for all of this but i am certain that there are answers to our questions but i don't want to make it sound too pious because that wouldn't be my thing i also have a lot of questions regarding to what religion can say in general did you feel the need to speak with other people about that in or outside of the church well i didn't really feel the need to exchange my thoughts because it was almost like a very intimate experience it would have been very difficult for me it was the other way around there once was a woman in her deathbed who needed me because of my occupation and she spoke to me she told me about her own near-death experience and i was listening to it at that point i reflected on my experience and thought this woman has experienced this too i was briefly close to saying i know and i didn't do it in the end it wouldn't have been helpful in this situation but i walked out of there i still remember this to this day i said look she's reported this in a similar way she was stammering as much as me now she said i can't say how it was if i say i know i didn't say it correctly five minutes later and there's such a suffering due to this untranslatability that this woman was struggling with the same problem and i thought you see this helped me to move forward and say come on it's time to deal with this particular day and this strange and unexplainable experience people who have had a new death experience often report that their relationship to religion and religiosity changed after the event they are in some ways more religious but it's a different form of religiosity which is less denominational what was it like in your case to what extent has this experience affected your life as a theologian the word vastness well i mean if we claim that ourselves it's maybe always a bit questionable but all those denominations or religions on this side of reality that we try to put into constructions of thought it's lost its importance to me and i had already believed it before but i hadn't experienced that this faith is true but if i compare this with an image this experience demonstrates that everything is a lot bigger a lot vaster a lot more universal and that it affects all of us and it's probably just very little can i say it like that but i don't want to be too cautious i'll just say it faith is a crutch for this side of the world it helps us to walk for me it's the christian belief system whether it is catholic or lutheran well i believe these two denominations have so many common features and not many proper differences anyway they never played a big role to me anyway faith is just a walking aid and i won't need this walking aid anymore this crutch that's what i connect with in this experience and i probably wouldn't have been able to live in the same way and i may not have been able to accept it in the same way if i hadn't had this accident have you mentioned or used your experience even if it was just subtly in one of your church services i tried it once but it didn't work out i didn't write down a sermon and read it out loud but i mentioned it well i tried to explain it with the help of an easter experience that life continues even though somebody is dead in our understanding which is actually the core of the christian belief system we've struggled for thousands of years to find images and then i just put aside the common images and that what other people have said and what is commonly known and i said and by the way dear parish i'm not telling you that as somebody who has to believe in it because i've read it but because i've experienced it myself it's a very personal story i don't know if i'm able to tell you about it and the hall went silent that was already quite good and then i try to tell that life is a lot more than we think it is that's no big news but i tried to tell it from a personal viewpoint and then i realized that some were thinking ah that's very interesting and others were like well now you're talking about something i can't quite follow where's your concept what's the point you want to make i can't really say but after this attempt i mentioned that i'd had a near-death experience once more although i don't know near death experience the term doesn't really quite fit it's more like but again a vision sounds more like as if i'd smoked something it's not the proper word either it's an experience and it's an experience at a certain point and i said i made this experience and sometimes i reassure people as part of my job when they ask do i need to be scared and i answer them no not at all i'm also certain that what i've experienced is something that applies to everybody nobody could talk me out of that but it's got nothing to do with the experience that you could have as a pious christian that you might suddenly meet jesus or that mary appears in front of you in my case this didn't happen all those things could have possibly happened but that wouldn't have fit into my vision my experience it was completely different guns unders it was way better well all those ideas that you might come up with especially in my occupation you're often confronted with the question of what happens after death what counts what should i take into consideration these things are all crutches and additions somewhat my own attempts to walk i won't need my legs to walk anymore by the way physicality i was there without my body i was more than just myself but without my body just try to explain that to somebody how are they supposed to grasp this all right i tried to talk about my experience and i failed miserably nevertheless this experience has played such a big role in my life that i think it affects and shines through all my words and all my attempts to be a good human being a good christian a good pastoral worker in the church tradition spiritual experiences have always played an important role at the same time it's also caused a sort of gap between those deeply formative experiences and the established doctrine and the worldview connected to it according to your opinion what would be the best way to deal with near-death experiences is the church the right place to do that well if you can't talk about this in the church where else could it be possible in our company so to speak everything is about things that cannot be put into words if there are people who use too many words or repeat things over and over again or also regarding this side of the world in these cases i get the impression it's not about the church or faith anymore sometimes i ask myself why are we so cautious to talk about near-death experiences to society i have i've been a priest for 24 years and i've met several people who've got such a gift in their lives and i know it's just the tip of the iceberg i am in this field of occupation i'm a bit in between things i'm convinced that there are certain grades of experiences that life is a lot bigger than we think and i truly wished i'd overcome this speechless i can definitely understand also from my experience if people say i can't talk about it for me personally that's also the case in my faith faith moves something internally it's so intimate i can't and i don't need to put it into words it's just there it carries due to this experience i'm carried through life more existentially more than by praying studying or fabricating something myself with great effort faith is closely related to the whole field of near-death experience and i'm asking myself why shouldn't we encourage people to talk about it it is what it's all about unfortunately for many people faith is just the conservation of certain ideas and anything that doesn't fit is more or less harshly judged there are for example so-called devout believers who call near-death experiences demonic influences or reflections of the devil what would you respond to such claims there was nothing demonic in my experience however i also recognize that there is something out there that isn't good canon this is but this dualism of heaven and hell god and the devil well i think these are the ideas you're talking about those ideas are pretty childish if i believe appropriately the more mature my faith becomes when i manage to rescue my faith and transfer it to my adult life then it will turn into a free belief that can think freely also by denominational and religious dogmas freedom faith tolerates freedom mature might have a bit more of a negative connotation when i'm talking about a mature faith jesus says when i don't believe the children and children may be able to believe more likely but many of us don't make the jump from a child like faith which is still quite simple to a faith that is reformed so to speak they fall into a gap the easier the better and the freer the deeper the faith and the institution we connect with faith well i'm sitting here wearing clerical clothes and i've got a post in the church the institution that we connect with faith is an addition a crutch a walking aid but there is this is maybe we are servants of a mystery and we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously we shouldn't prioritize ourselves too much because one of the main aims of the church denomination and religion are to be a companion into a world that is going to surprise us and if we are against this too much i'd have the impression that it's not about god anymore it's about ourselves we do have ideas we were also given an epiphany but the reality we're living towards is a lot bigger than we can imagine but that's also been a long tradition the catholic church often mentions these things through saints who said it's completely different and that's also been my experience it's completely different it's a lot better and nothing can go wrong if i want to summarize this whole jumble we're talking about 20 years of thinking and processing if i could be able to summarize this in one sentence a sentence that carries weight other sentences however seem very weird to me afterwards nothing can go wrong and what does this mean your life of course i know due to my job i'm confronted with cases where things go wrong badly and that there are things that cannot be answered that you might ask yourself where is god there cannot be a god thinking about god as a person well that's all very difficult but in the end i can still sum it up as nothing can go wrong and this is life changing it is well i can't just keep silent about it near death experiences or let's also call them close to life experiences lead to a more mature faith is it possible to summarize it like that yes that was clear we wonder about certain things the things we know are just a drop but what we don't know is as big as an ocean but that's a saying that is not unknown i could have read this somewhere as somebody who chooses to believe in this sort of thing and somebody who likes this image however i did experience it and that's not just an interpretation i came up with afterwards it's not an attempt to create a memory it's an experience that changed me i wish i was able to talk better about it but somehow it's just not really possible because such things cannot be put into words we know that if i hadn't spoken to anybody i wouldn't have dealt with my own experience thus i'm aware of the difficulty of doing that it's way easier not to think about it it's like a rabbit hole behind this rabbit hole everything's completely different like in alice in wonderland but as a priest of the church i know that many people make this experience i assume that it's more than 10 i think that it's an experience many people have encountered an experience carried in their hearts that is not talked about and speaking about my own experience if i hadn't got into this little push caused by a benedictive conversation it would have been covered and i would have missed the most important thing in my life thus i'd like to encourage people people talk about it i know it's very difficult i couldn't do it for years and i'm stammering even now of course i'm dissatisfied with every word that i'm trying to use because it's words and words are not enough language is not enough but i am convinced many people have received this gift they have received something that's more than what we read about during our lives hold on to it it's valuable it's got a huge value although it is difficult to try and confront something that cannot be explained in words but what are words they're a facade and reality is behind them mr lumper thank you very much for sharing your experience and thoughts with us all the best and thank you very much for giving this interview you

Channel: Thanatos TV EN

Views: 187,748

Keywords: Near Death Experience, Priest, Stefan Lampe, Life after Death

Id: TjlFrgS_53Y

Length: 34min 12sec (2052 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020