I’ve been in a common-law arrangement for six years. My wife is now studying her M. Sc. in psychology. Until posting the story of my experience, I had not mentioned it to her, or anyone else, for many years.

She says the reason is clear. The brain does its utmost to avoid trauma. It was natural that I passed out at the instant that the event began, and also that I made little of it as I walked away. I set it aside in my mind, for future reference. It did not become the turning point in my life that it should have been for the simple reason that I didn’t internalize it. One might say that God chose to keep me alive, and thus it was a miracle. Another might say that my will to live, passed down genetically and reinforced by my octogenarian father and aunt’s example, was what dictated my reactions.

There are other possibilities that I had not considered until today. In 1972, while a senior in a Long Island high school, I had my star chart read by a fairly serious astrology buff. I knew him as a high school English teacher. He found death in the offing. He was quick to add that death might refer to a drastic change.

In 1976 I had a tarot reading done and again death was my prognosis. As before, the reader, a friend of mine from high school, assured me that death could refer to a major change in my life.

In 1977 I moved to Israel, where I have lived ever since. In 1978, the near death experience described in a previous account, took place. In 1981 and 1987 I visited family and friends in the United States. On one of these trips I again met my tarot reading friend, but this time he was a palm-reader. He looked at my left palm, claiming that the left palm was the correct one for readings, and found that my lifeline was very short at its origin between the thumb and forefinger, but after a break, it resumed from a different point, going all the way to my wrist. He remarked that he had never seen such an aberration before.

For years I have thought that my moving from Long Island to Israel was my “death”. Only now am I beginning to realize that the accident, and the few seconds’ blackout as I was carried by my head from point A to point B, was my death. It explains the three readings far better than moving to Israel does.

Now, however, I have begun to entertain another thought. I am toying with the idea that my skull was crushed, I died, and my soul moved on to an alternate universe, where I have lived ever since. Since my consciousness left my body before the final impact, it may have been saved, only to reconstitute itself in another “me”.

While this “other” universe is extremely physical, could it not be the place where consciousness goes after our bodies die?