Atheist Dies on the Operating Table, Meets Her Spirit Guide, and Sent Back With 12 Messages to Share on Love, Connections & Why We Are Never Alone | Nancy Rynes

Episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown · November 3, 2026 · 58 min

Former atheist geologist Nancy Rynes tells Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen about her 2014 bike crash, out-of-body split consciousness, and near-death experience during spinal surgery.

Summary

In the first part of a two-part conversation, Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen interviewed Nancy Rynes, a geologist and archaeologist turned artist and author of Awakenings from the Light. Rynes described a spiritual early childhood, a possible near-death experience at age four, and a turn toward atheism in her teens, which she attributed to her scientific interests and to the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals in the Chicago area. She said that for 10 to 15 years before her NDE she was terrified of death as nothingness.

Rynes recounted a month of recurring butterfly dreams in December 2013 and an inner voice telling her not to go out on the day in January 2014 when an SUV driver, who Rynes said was texting, struck her in a Colorado roundabout. She described clinging to the hood, falling underneath and holding the axle, and a simultaneous split in which her "higher self" observed the scene calmly. She credited a passing truck driver who blocked the SUV, her helmet, and a blonde woman calling herself Ann or Annie, a trauma nurse who held her still and later vanished and was never identified. Bialik interpreted the split consciousness as a near-death experience in itself.

Rynes listed her injuries, including a shattered cervical spine, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a brain bleed, and said doctors did not expect her to survive the weekend. During spinal surgery three days later she said she found herself on a silvery, ethereal hillside threaded with pulsating energy, which she came to see as a construct. Wondering why, as an atheist, she was not in hell, she heard a voice welcoming her home and recalled her existence before this life. Bialik linked this to psychedelic and transcendental experiences and to traditions of a forgetting at birth. The episode ended before Rynes's encounter with her spirit guide, the life review, and the 12 lessons, which were promised for part two.

Chapters

  1. 0:00

    Introduction

    Bialik and Cohen introduce Nancy Rynes, a former atheist geologist whose near-death experience transformed her life.

  2. 3:17

    Spiritual childhood and turn to atheism

    Rynes describes a spiritual early childhood, her Catholic upbringing, and how science and the clergy abuse scandal led her to atheism and a fear of death.

  3. 15:00

    Premonitions and butterfly dreams

    Rynes recounts recurring butterfly dreams in December 2013 and an inner voice warning her not to ride on the day of the accident.

  4. 19:53

    The crash in the roundabout

    Rynes details being hit by a texting SUV driver, clinging to the hood, and being dragged underneath the vehicle.

  5. 26:39

    Split consciousness

    Rynes describes her higher self observing the accident calmly while her human self was terrified, and Bialik interprets it as a near-death experience.

  6. 34:38

    The mysterious nurse Ann

    Rynes describes the truck driver who stopped the SUV, her urge to flee, and an unidentified woman who kept her still and then vanished.

  7. 48:20

    Injuries and the hospital

    Rynes lists her extensive injuries and recounts that doctors did not expect her to survive the weekend.

  8. Linked moment · 51:02Skip to 51:02 using a listen link in the info box.

    51:02

    Waking on the ethereal hillside

    During surgery Rynes finds herself in a silvery landscape of pulsating energy and realizes she may have died.

  9. 56:09

    Welcome home and the filters removed

    Rynes hears a voice welcoming her home, and she and Bialik discuss the forgetting that comes with incarnation before the episode closes ahead of part two.

Key points

What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says the abuse of children by priests during her Catholic upbringing near Chicago turned her away from belief in a divine being.

    “It unfortunately overlapped with the time that there was a lot of trauma within the Catholic community about young kids getting abused by priests”

    Listen from 4:13 · Catholic Church

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says that during her atheist years she was terrified of death because she believed consciousness simply ceased.

    “I would sometimes even lay awake at night shivering at the thought of no longer existing”

    Listen from 10:43 · Atheism

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes interprets her recurring butterfly dreams before the accident as a message about transformation rather than physical death.

    “Butterflies are really a symbol of transformation, if you think about it. So I think that's what those dreams were trying to tell me”

    Listen from 17:51 · Premonition

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says the SUV driver accelerated into the stop sign while texting and never saw her on the hood.

    “she had her phone up on her steering wheel kind of doing, she was texting while she was driving”

    Listen from 23:46 · Distracted driving

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes credits her bicycle helmet as the main reason she survived the accident.

    “Honestly, the helmet is really the only reason I survived that accident. That and some people that helped out right afterward”

    Listen from 26:26 · Spinal cord injury

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says that while trapped under the car, a calm observer part of her separated from her terrified human self.

    “my soul or my higher self popped out of that immediate trauma and was standing off to the side kind of watching everything happen”

    Listen from 26:39 · Out-of-body experience

  • Mayim Bialik

    Bialik argues that Rynes's split consciousness during the crash was itself a near-death experience at the threshold of death.

    “To me, what this sounds like is you were dying. You were possibly at the threshold of death and something snapped that back into you”

    Listen from 30:27 · Near-death experience

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says she knows the observer experience was real because it showed her how the SUV was stopped, which she could not see from under the car.

    “So this is how I know now that that was real because underneath the car, underneath the SUV, I can't see much”

    Listen from 35:49 · Out-of-body experience

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says she felt no pain during the accident because of natural endorphins, which is why she believed she could get up and run.

    “because of the natural endorphins that we have, I absolutely felt zero pain. That's why I thought I could get up and run”

    Listen from 41:13 · Spinal cord injury

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says a woman calling herself Ann, a trauma nurse, held her still until paramedics arrived, then disappeared and refused to identify herself to police.

    “She refused to give him her name. She wouldn't give him any details about who she was or where she could be reached”

    Listen from 47:14 · Near-death experience

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says that during surgery she found herself in a sunless, silvery landscape underlain by pulsating lines of energy.

    “It looked like tendrils of energy flowing everywhere. That's the only way I could describe it. Underneath of everything that I saw was these pulsating lines of energy”

    Listen from 54:49 · Near-death experience

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes says that upon realizing she might have died, she questioned why she was not in hell as she had been taught atheists would be.

    “If I did die down there on the operating table, this doesn't look like any idea of hell I've ever been told”

    Listen from 57:18 · Atheism

  • Mayim Bialik

    Bialik suggests that psychedelics and transcendental experiences may put people in touch with a real truth that the soul exists beyond the body.

    “Maybe what drugs and transcendental experiences are getting us in touch with is an actual truth that we are a soul that exists beyond this corporal being”

    Listen from 59:46 · Psychedelic therapy

  • Nancy Rynes

    Rynes argues that people incarnate with filters on awareness and memory so they can focus on what they are meant to learn on Earth.

    “when we come into this life, we have to come in with a set of filters on our awareness, on our memory, in order to be able to focus in”

    Listen from 1:01:12 · Consciousness

  • Mayim Bialik

    Bialik compares the spiritual forgetting at birth to the brain's sensory filtering, such as the thalamus suppressing awareness of clothing.

    “So in the same way that the brain does that, right? So like, this is like a fractal, right?”

    Listen from 1:02:24 · Consciousness

People

In the conversation

  • Mayim BialikActress, neuroscientist and host of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
  • Jonathan CohenExecutive producer and co-host of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, writer and energy worker
  • Nancy RynesFormer geologist and archaeological artist, artist, speaker, and author of Awakenings from the Light

Discussed

  • Rizwan VirkEntrepreneur and video game designer cited by Cohen as linking health problems to straying from his life path

Topics

More from Mayim Bialik's Breakdown

From the publisher

What if time isn’t real, multiple timelines exist simultaneously, and your consciousness can leave your body? In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Nancy Rynes (scientist, geologist, archaeologist, artist, inspirational speaker, and author of Awakenings from the Light: 12 Life Lessons from a Near Death Experience) reveals the unbelievable story of her near death experience (NDE) and the profound revelations that changed everything she believed about life, death, consciousness, and what happens after we die. After being hit by a car while riding her bike, Nancy describes watching the accident from outside her body, experiencing a split in consciousness between her ordinary “ego” awareness and what she calls her higher self, and encountering a mysterious woman who helped her at the scene, yet has never been identified to this day. During surgery, Nancy says she awakened somewhere completely unlike the physical world: a beautiful, ethereal hillside filled with tendrils of pulsating energy. But it wasn't a physical place at all. Nancy came to understand it as a kind of “construct.” As an atheist, her first question upon realizing she may have died was why wasn’t she in hell? Then came her encounter with a spirit guide, who told Nancy she had to return to “earth school”, something she desperately did not want to do. Nancy remembers an agreement she believes she made before birth: a “soul contract” that included being born into her particular family and undergoing specific personal transformations in order to fulfill her soul’s purpose. She also shares the 12 life lessons she says emerged from her NDE, including her profound belief that “God is love” and completely all-encompassing and all-inclusive, and that we are never truly alone. She explains why she believes energy levels may be the only thing separating our reality from the other realm, and recounts a powerful life review in which she experienced how her actions had positively or negatively affected other p…

Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 8, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.

Categories: Spirituality·Religion & Spirituality·Society & Culture