Light, a silent hall and a dark valley: José Maurício's three experiences

In 1994, hospital technician José Maurício lay down on an operating table in Niterói to have a tumor removed from his head and blacked out partway through the anesthesia count. What he says he lived through from that point on, and in the years that followed, is one of the most complete accounts from someone who claims to have crossed the border between life and death, told by him to the channel Afinal, o que somos?.

There is no way to verify what José describes. The interest of the case lies elsewhere: it brings together, in a single biography, the most common elements of near-death experiences, NDEs, and one of the rarest, the dark side that few report.

The tumor and the fear

The symptoms came gradually: severe headaches, blurred vision, nausea. Tests showed an adenoma on the pituitary, a small gland at the base of the brain that regulates much of the body's hormones. Tumors like this are usually benign, but the surgery is delicate. His was rescheduled twice. Before entering the operating room, he says, he was gripped by the fear of dying and of being separated from his family.

Absolute white

Under anesthesia, he says he woke up in a space entirely white, with no ceiling, walls or floor, lying on something like a stretcher. Beside him stood a woman dressed in sky blue, her hands over his chest. He did not know who she was, but felt protected and at peace. "It was as if she said everything with just her gaze," he recalls.

Unexplained peace and a welcoming figure are among the most cited traits in NDEs. Gradually walls appeared, the woman vanished, and José returned to his body: his face bandaged, stitches in his mouth, the taste of blood, and a memory he still describes today as vivid.

The hall in Botafogo

About a month and a half later, during a visit to his old workplace, in Botafogo, he lay down to rest. Half asleep, he heard voices and footsteps in a room where he was alone and felt his body grow heavy, as if he were outside it.

A presence led him up a rustic wooden staircase to an immense hall, where people, many of them elderly, moved about in silence. There he recognized Dona Estela, a neighbor who had already died, who smiled without speaking. José understood the place as a waystation between dimensions. A door opened, and everything turned to light.

The dark valley

Years later came the experience that stands apart from the others. In the midst of a deep depression, with a wish to die, José prayed for help and found himself in a dark, rocky valley, amid wailing, screams and a shadowy figure that followed him. The woman in blue reappeared and, with a gesture of light, pulled him out of there.

Distressing experiences of this kind exist in the near-death-experience literature, though they are reported far less often than the luminous ones, perhaps because those who live them speak less about them. In José's account, the shadow and the light meet in the same protective figure.

What remained

From the three episodes, he drew a worldview: life as a field of learning, and the idea that each person accesses the realities that correspond to what they vibrate. For him, death is a passage, spiritual presences protect those who allow it, and sincere prayer dissolves shadows.

José survived the tumor, the surgery and the depression. He says he lives with the certainty that time here is short. It is a certainty no test confirms, but one that reorganized the life of the person who carries it.