[Music] one morning I was really late for work on base and so my supervisor of course has a key to your dorm room she came in thinking she was going to catch me sleeping and instead she found me unconscious on my dorm room floor as the doctors and nurses are all starting to stand over me it became like something out of a movie or TV show where and my vision starts to kind of go to the left to the right and things get hazy and it just didn't feel like reality and then the voice to
the left of me said you're going to have air is going to travel up your arm it's going to be really painful but everything's going to be okay finally after trying to continually look over to my left I finally did and Not only was there nobody to the left of me but I saw the screen completely Flatline in that moment as I saw myself Flatline I started traveling upwards it was the best feeling I I think I could ever experience it was like this beautiful Blissful just this feeling of love surrounding my [Music] body my
name is Chase Skyler Deo and I grew up in Orlando Florida my grandparents actually adopted me from the day I was born my mother had me way too young she was 17 and my biological father was you know had no interest in being in the picture uh but luckily my grandparents had already adopted quite a few other children so I actually have two Korean sisters a Korean brother and a black brother you don't think about you know your grandparents adopted you and your parents are different until you start going to school and people start pointing
out that you don't look like your siblings we would go out to eat and people would ask what church are you with cuz it didn't make sense that that all of these different looking kids are all part of the same family we would pile out of an actual like you know Tropic traveler bus if you remember those and uh yeah we just had this great childhood in 7th grade I had an opportunity to join an Roc you know like um a middle school you know military program and I jumped at the opportunity I was one
of the first volunteers my grandfather served in the military and my great-grandfather served in the Navy and so there was always just something inside of me that said you know this is this is what you need to do as well um certainly wasn't a burden it was something that I was really excited to um you know feel that call of you know to go and defend the country that I really loved and so as soon as I could join the second I turned 17 I joined the Air Force because my dad who served in the
Army said if you're going to join any branch and you're going to let me sign paperwork for you to join you're going to join the Air Force cuz I think he was always a little jealous of the how good the Air Force had it and you know as a parent you want the best for your kids so uh the Air Force it was from basic training I joined as a sear instructor s re and that's Survival evasion resistance and escape the job of a sear instructor is to essentially learn the terrain for pilots and then
you would train the pilots if there was ever a mishap or an accident uh how to survive off the land not long into that training I injured both of my knees it was just a training accident unfortunately um it's like getting hurt in practice it's kind of embarrassing but um both kneecaps kind of came out and ruptured out and the the surgery that they were going to do is called a lateral release and it's where they reset the kneecaps back in Looking Back Now I probably could have rehabbed it without surgery and still been doing
the original job but the surgeon in the Air Force said that surgery was the best course at that time and unfortunately the knee surgery wasn't a success up until that point I had a clear goal of what I wanted for my life and what I expected for my life you know 20 years in the military and once the knee injury happened it started to crumble my goals and my my vision for my life it was catastrophic for me I didn't know what I was going to do and I started to get really scared and really
nervous uh my friends were worried about me just because I I felt like my life was caving in they start this process of retirement where they say you know your body is no longer good enough you know to stay in the military and it is a long process during that time I started showing up late you know I was young and and a little bit unprofessional in that sense where I knew I was I was going to get out of the military so what are they going to do are they going to fire me you
know so I would show up up late every once in a while to my office so one morning I was really late for for work um on base and so my supervisor of course has a key to your dorm room she came in thinking she was going to catch me sleeping and instead she found me unconscious on my dorm room floor so they sent me uh immediately of course to the Langley Air Force Base hospital where they hooked me up to every machine possible started doing blood work started doing tests to figure out why I
was unconscious on my you know dorm room floor and they couldn't find anything wrong I was young and I was in the best shape of my life there was just really no reason why I should be unconscious right so they of course looked into everything that that a doctor should look into was he on drugs was he drinking was it something like that and at the time I never you know never touched a drug still haven't so they just couldn't make sense of why I was unconscious so the nurse then said we're going to do
a couple more tests we're going to do a chest x-ray on you and if if we can't find anything then we're just going to send you back home it just you know there's really no reason for you to be here still when she fiddled with my IV and she walked out of the room from that moment everything changed I heard the alarm start going off and it became like something out of a movie or TV show where the alarms are going off and my vision starts to kind of go to the left to the right
and things get hazy and it just didn't feel like reality and the nurses and doctors start kind of running in I was at the end of the hallway um you know in my hospital room so they're almost running into the wall they're running in so fast as the alarm start to blare and I obviously of course knew something was really wrong as the doctors and nurses are all starting to stand over me and work on my body somebody sat down to the left of me and started stroking my arm telling me everything was going to
be okay and while this alarm is going off and while people are shouting and you can hear the nervousness in their voice I was very aware that they knew something was wrong and then the voice to the left of me said you're going to have air is going to travel up your arm it's going to be really painful but everything's going to be okay the pain that started to come up my arm the best way I can really describe it as like a silver bullet just a giant bullet it felt like something 51 times too
large in that vein it was so painful that you could almost feel every kind of cimeter or inch of it traveling up I mean it really was like a train headed towards you know my heart and I remember my right leg kind of kicking up in the air while those nurses and doctors were above me you know just kind of like a natural reaction or reflex to this this pain traveling up the arm but the calm voice of the the left of me was so assured and petting my arm and at the time your military
guy the thought of having a guy kind of stroke my arm you know probably if you would have asked me then was like you know I don't want a guy stroking my arm you know what are you doing you know but it was so calm and reassuring to have somebody to the left of me just saying it's going to be fine it's going to be okay it's such a weird feeling to feel so calm while you're experienc experiencing so much pain um which is really confusing and and while nurses and doctors are sh at each
other I could so vividly hear the voice to my left was so calm finally after trying to continually look over to my left I finally did and Not only was there nobody to the left of me but I saw the screen completely Flatline in that moment as I saw myself Flatline I started traveling [Music] upwards the best way I can describe it and I get goosebumps every time I talk about it it just felt like everything started to free up in my body it felt like ice like this really cool beautiful feeling of my body
just starting to release and kind of pour out of my chest almost like a a shooting a tunnel out of my chest of light it was the best feeling I think I could ever experience it was like this beautiful Blissful just this feeling of love surrounding my body I could have experienced that feeling a million times over uh and there's just no way to describe it but I was moving upwards to this area where I couldn't see where I was going but I just had complete Trust of where I'm going is really beautiful if this
is the feeling now I can only imagine where I'm about to go and not before long I ended up in this garden and it was a garden filled with flowers and plants that we've never seen before and these beautiful colors and everything was just vibrant it was almost like looking into the sun where have to squint a little bit because everything was so beautiful and colorful I had no preconceived notion of really what heaven was I I just I grew up loving Elvis and I thought Elvis would be waiting there for me and everything would
just be kind of calm and peaceful and you wouldd be up in the clouds and the heaven that I experienced was so much more Vivid and so much more real there wasn't a floating sense your body felt so light there was Zero Gravity but the garden and the leaves were so real um these plants and flowers that were so bright we just don't we don't have those colors here uh you know I could say they were purple and red and blue but it just doesn't do it justice everything was just so bright and almost kind
of war w you know there's a vibration off of everything you just felt so in tune and connected um when we walk past the tree or we walk down a sidewalk now you might say that's a beautiful PL or a beautiful flower where in heaven it felt like I was feeling the the plants and the flowers you know when you dream you don't necessarily feel something you kind of Envision it and if you're dreaming you're off in this little world this was so real because I was feeling things and I felt I felt the grains
of of dirt in between my toes and um I hate being Barefoot so it was a vivid memory for me that I could actually feel dirt in my feet and ahead of me I saw a gentleman in a robe and he was chasing after a little boy about three or four years old little curly-haired blonde boy the little boy was kind of running ahead looking back he was being cheeky and as I see the boy running I'm just watching this beautiful interaction almost like Father's son and I watch this little boy just so happy and
so purely enjoying his life and until I got close then you kind of look down and go oh my gosh that's me I forgot I had blonde curly hair and I used to be that happy and I used to just laugh all the time and smile constantly as a kid growing up no matter what was going on around me it was always uh I was always a happy kid and I think I had forgotten that by that time by the time I was 19 I was taking life so seriously um I was so worried about
career and Military and all these things that I had so forgotten about being that happy little kid and so that was a beautiful reminder of of how I used to be as I see the man turn to me I immediately knew it was Jesus and and I should say too Jesus didn't look like what I would have thought he would have looked like but I was so certain it was him he had short brown hair piercing green eyes and the biggest grin possible but growing up you see a man with like you know long blonde
hair a lot of times and um and really skinny and um and this man was just a healthy um peaceful man in a robe but as sure as you're sure of what your left hand and your right hand is and you look in the mirror and you know it's you I knew it was Jesus and in that moment Jesus turned to me and he basically showed me this is what your life should be spreading light love and laughter almost like a sense of reminder that you've been here and you already know this like you you
have forgotten it but you've all always known about the joys in life about finding any reason to make yourself smile throughout the day and this reminder that you're taking life way too seriously at that time in the Air Force I was I really thought my life was over I everything that I had trained for and hoped for and envision for my life was done and that conversation alone was enough for me to say okay I'm I'm focusing on all the wrong stuff here I'm focusing on a career I'm focused on money I'm focused on making
sure I can make a car pay when really none of that at the end of the day matters it's feeling fulfilled and feeling like I have given back to the world of uh making people smile and it was such a good lesson of this is what life is supposed to be forever you're supposed to always find joy and laughter and happiness and we stood there for quite a while and time stand still um I couldn't say if it was 5 minutes I couldn't say if it was 5 hours it was this amount of time for
me to get so much much knowledge that I felt like I already knew but it was such a friendly relationship that felt like I had spent so much time with them in the past and before I knew it he kind of joked and and smiled and said you know you have to go back and I didn't argue I said yeah I know and it was such a reminder that I have been here multiple times uh maybe not as dramatic as a near-death experience or or being flatlined but I have been there um so many times
that it was just a kind kind of you know better you know you can't stick around here too long you know you've got to go back and I said okay I understand and it was just this very playful friendly thing just like you're saying goodbye to a friend you know that you've seen him before and you're going to see him again so you're just saying bye for now um and it was very peaceful there was no part of my body that said I wanted to stay it was just like you know spending time with a
friend and you know you've got to go back to your house uh before you go back home again you know and um it just felt like it was so understood that that I had a lot more to do and before I knew it I was back in my body in a different city off base so the air force during that time had sent me off base to a uh Hampton Virginia to a different hospital for me to be pronounced dead and I woke up and I started opening my eyes and of course at that time
you know when you have the best dream you think you know you think it's a dream and you kind of close your eyes to go back and you open your eyes again you like that I can't go back right now and my eyes were open and my body felt completely normal I had no pain in my chest um obviously the confusion had set in of I'm not in the same room I I I died in and and the people walking past the hallway are not in military uniforms so it was very clear that I wasn't
on base anymore before long a nurse had peaked in and you know I said hello and she looked frazzled and she said I'm going to go get a doctor and took off and and ran away and a doctor came back in and said I don't know what to tell you um but we're going to send you back to the Air Force and they're they can do what they want with you and and uh and that was it I got a chance to call a friend and got on the phone with them and said I just
died uh can you come pick me up from the hospital and they said of course and we did what every person who would die and come back does and we went to chick-fil cuz I was starving uh I guess death made me very hungry and uh we went to Chick-fil-A and and I said I'd really like to get out of town for a couple of days I was really um just confused and I didn't want to go back and sit in the same dorm room that I was in and we went to Washington DC for
a couple of days saw all the monuments and took pictures during that time my my left arm was just black and blue uh the bruising was so bad from that air traveling up to my heart I went back to the hospital again because the bruising on my arm was still so bad and I wanted an answer I I wanted to make sense of it why did I die why did I um experience you know the the flat lining and so I went back to the hospital and they documented what had happened to my arm and
they wrote an entire paragraph of uh patients suffered an air embolism that's when air travels up to your heart so it looks like the nurse uh on accident allowed air to get through the IV that was you know in in one of the main uh veins for me and and accidentally flatlined me um but the nurses and doctors um you know they couldn't make sense of it either I don't know how many people that they saw Flatline survived so there was never really an honest conversation um with the medical staff of here's exactly what happened
to you and we can't we can't figure out how you're still here and from that time forward although I didn't feel comfortable telling people the story because I felt very grounded in the sense if if I go tell people this going to think I'm crazy and that was a genuine concern cuz I didn't know about even the term near-death experience or an nde that none of that world made sense to me I just thought people would think I was nuts and so I just wouldn't tell people unless they were really close to me and I
just didn't know how to navigate um this new experience that I had been through by July 8th 2008 so just a few months later I was fully retired from the military within a week of me getting back my life changed so dramatically anything that I had thought looked fun growing up or anything that interested me I said I'm going to go do it now I joined a break dancing club at a local University that I didn't even go to I ended up doing stand-up comedy for a little bit I got into photography and I got
to photograph people's weddings I learned how to ballroom dance and became a ballroom dance instructor and I just was almost like checking these things off of the box of like I have another opportunity to be here and I'm going to go out and enjoy life and I just did a huge list of things I got to host uh you know contests with celebrities and and uh get to go on TV and I got to be an announcer for a local baseball and hockey team in in Norfolk Virginia for a couple of years I just I
wanted so badly to do things that made me happy and I could spread the light laughter and love that I was told to continue to share but then this part of me unfortunately said no it's time to grow up you have to grow up now you have to go get a real person job so I took a job working for a radio station and it was a very corporate job and I did that for quite a few years um and it was fulfilling I paid my bills you know we got a nice house but that's
when really um I started to feel guilty that I was I became selfish and I wasn't sharing laughter with everybody I was sitting in an office and I was not able to create memories for people anymore and I went on a retreat um it was with a u a veteran organization that sends veterans out as a group and you get to spend five days doing yoga and meditation and they talk to you about you know um really focusing on your mental health and finding peace within yourself I had never really meditated I had never done
yoga before a bunch of Macho veteran guys you know doing yoga of course everybody at the time maybe rolled their eyes but at the end of the 5 days but it felt like it was the happiest I had ever been in my life and so I got back and my wife immediately within minutes of seeing me um on that Friday afternoon said you're a different person you seemed so relaxed and that that during that time I was so focused on my corporate job of being the serious executive and she said you you've changed you know
you you just seem so happy with yourself and in that moment I started to ask again what is my purpose why am I here I really started to remember my near-death experience and um within a day or two I started to feel my body completely changed and become so aware of my surroundings and I think just doing the meditation and the yoga and the breathing exercises relaxed my mind so much that I was able to really look at the outside world and get a better understanding of how how I could help I started to really
realize that I had gifts that maybe weren't as common as maybe I had thought and I started to really feel everybody's emotions around me the intuition became stronger and I was so aware of if other people around me complete strangers were suffering at the time I felt this burden of I need to fix everybody around me I have to heal everybody of their suffering and try to bring any sort of positive energy I can to them to try to help them through that pain if they're sad and they're near me it's my job now it's
my job to help them um not experience that I really started to embrace it and accept that this is the new reality of of some of the things that I'm able to um to offer the [Music] world my grandmother was in the hospital I found out and I started to really pray and do what I know and it's a feeling within my kind of my my chest or my heart where I can kind of put my hands out and pray um for a little less pain I know that I can't completely heal everybody but I
was just praying for a little less pain for her and a little less suffering and before I knew it I started to feel tingling in the palms of my hands and I'm kind of looking down and i' put my hands down and I'd look down again and next thing I know I've got really visible marks on both Palms of my hands but I knew immediately okay this is this is kind of freaking me out a little bit and I showed my wife and I took a picture of it cuz I said I need to document
this and and maybe show it to somebody that I trust and I showed it to people and immediately they said you have to stop taking other people's pain it's not your pain to take and I said okay okay in my brain my human brain I want to just say it's an allergic reaction it's it's just something that's happening to my body just like getting a a rash on your your for forearm but they started coming only at times where I was really trying to help somebody around me so it is not a painful experience at
all it is a peaceful experience that I can physically feel uh within my hands um like an energy is coming just through that that part of my hand I was on a plane and I think it was just completely silent on the plane and I could never nap on a plane and uh and I just felt this this presence that immediately kind of hit me in my chest and was like whoo you know and I knew it was Jesus again and um we just had this exchange of you know hey you're on the right path
but take care of yourself you you if you drain your battery you you're not going to be ever you're not not going to be able to help anybody and he said you have to allow people to have a human experience you can't take everybody's pain because some people need to experience that pain and that was was profound for me but it also was really hard um it was a reminder that I can't go try to just heal everybody that I think is suffering because then I'm going to suffer too and I have to still allow
people to experience this human world that we're in and it's not my job to continually intervene into people's lives and it would be very clear when I had the opportunity to heal people um and so that's that's pretty recent that's within the last couple of months that I'm now trying to figure out um how to use my gifts without um interfering in people's lives it's hard to experience what I experienced and not come back a different person laughter smiling it's such an easy thing it's free it's just like Breath Right like we can breathe for
free we can pray for free we can meditate for free and we can laugh for free we can find joys in everything and we live in a world right now where it seems like we're so separated I drive past the bus stop that I grew up going to almost daily and I had great memories as a kid laughing and playing right before school nowadays the kids are all 10et apart from each other on their phones and that's tough to watch to me smiling and laughter and being close to people is what I think is the
best medicine for us my understanding is is that we all are here to serve a very specific purpose and not everybody's life's purpose has to be this big Holy One you know that we're meant to all have different goals and different personalities just like a fingerprint is meant to be different but for me it's to continually learn and evolve when you're a little kid and when I was that little boy that I saw in heaven when you're that age you're absorbing everything and you're continually learning and you're experiencing everything through a a view of everything
is great uh you don't have these grownup constraints and stresses on you and so I try to do that now is continually try to learn to stay in school getting alternative medicine degrees getting a Ministry degree and after that I'm going to school again and I think as long as we continually learn um I think we're in we're going to leave the world in a better place as long as we learn from history and learn from past mistakes my grandmother has always said that education would heal the world and I do believe as long as
we are continually learning that we are uh setting the Next Generation up to continually make it better knowing that you know education looks different to everybody whether you're actually in school or you're reading a book every day or you're reading the news every day as long as it's educating you and not just making you more depressed I think um that is the meaning of life is um learning evolving and making everything better than than how we [Music] came [Music]
