A stabbing, steady pain in my hip forced me to sit down as I exited the lecture hall. I had been speaking to a large audience in Saint Petersburg, Florida, about a vibrational healing method called grounding. It was October 2010.
I had undergone a hip replacement four months earlier, and I’d been rationalizing that the pain, though intense, must be a common side effect of that surgery, or maybe I had just been on my feet for too long that day. Either way, I had convinced myself that the pain would stop on its own.
Yet, despite my attempt at maintaining a positive attitude, the pain did not subside. In fact, as I continued to walk to the exhibit hall of alternative medicine vendors, I was in so much agony that I nearly collapsed on a bench. I looked around and rather shouted to the crowd passing me by, “Anyone have any serrapeptase?” Serrapeptase is an anti-inflammatory enzyme that can break down protein coats of microbes in the body that contribute to scar tissue, plaque, clots, and cysts.
To my surprise, a woman stepped forward and announced that she indeed had some serrapeptase. I was caught a bit off guard. Serrapeptase is something you’d normally find at a supplement vendor’s booth but not something you’d expect to get from a conference attendee.
A solidly built man who was with her approached me. They introduced themselves as Tommy and Michelle Rosa and commented on how much they liked my presentation. We chatted for a few minutes. Michelle excused herself and left for her hotel room to get the serrapeptase.
I mentioned to Tommy that I was resting because of a pain in my hip.
He looked right back at me. Without skipping a beat, he said, “You have a staph infection in your right hip, and you got it recently when you had hip surgery.”
I was stunned. A total stranger knew that I’d had surgery on my right hip? Impossible!
“How could you know all this just by looking at me?” I asked.
He just shrugged his shoulders and softly replied, “Spirit told me.”
I was amazed that someone who was not a doctor could intuitively catch such a serious problem.
Just three weeks before the conference, I’d had surgical biopsies for lesions on my face that might be skin cancer—probably an ill-timed decision in light of my new, postoperative metallic hip. You see, Staphylococcus aureus is on our skin all the time. With an open incision, it can intrude into the bloodstream. And any metal in the body can be like an antenna for wandering microbes.
So staph aureus, as we medical folk call it, may localize in surgical wounds like mine. It can generate dangerous infections in the blood, bone, and skin and can be deadly serious. This microbe can stubbornly mutate and resist the very antibiotics designed to stop it. Within hospitals, staph kills tens of thousands every year.
Had it not been for this “chance” encounter with Tommy, I shudder to think what might have happened to me as the result of an untreated bacterial infection. And if you’d ever predicted that a non-medically trained attendee at one of my public lectures would be able to diagnose this in me, I wouldn’t have believed you! But unlike many doctors, I’m convinced that everything happens for a reason.
It wasn’t long before Michelle rejoined us, serrapeptase in hand. That’s when she shared that, as she was packing to attend the conference, she had received a “message” to pack that little bottle of serrapeptase. I was instantly intrigued. Now I knew that something was going on, and I had to get to know these people better! There was some connection Tommy and I both felt in that moment. This connection would ultimately lead to a very special friendship that I cherish to this day and always will. And it would take us down a path of discovery that would be life changing for both of us—one that would completely alter the way I think about life and afterlife.
What Tommy did not immediately reveal was that several years prior, he had been in a very serious hit-and-run accident. Dead for several minutes, he was resuscitated but left in a coma for weeks. What he experienced as a result of this trauma left him a profoundly changed man who was given special insight during his “death” and became a powerful spiritual advisor in his new life after “death.”
As our friendship deepened, Tommy opened up even more to me about something he had held inside for many years: that during his comatose state, he was transported by a tunnel of light to Heaven, where he met a spiritual Teacher and learned fundamentals about health and healing. I was both astonished and fascinated. I consider myself a spiritual man as well as a scientist, so it wasn’t hard for me to accept Tommy’s account as genuine and valid. But here I was with a man who had no medical training but could communicate with me about medicine as if he had studied it his whole life.
Tommy had what is known as a near-death experience (NDE). Throughout the documented history of man, all religions have shared one deep and common element: a belief that there is life after death. Our numerous formal accounts of man’s speculation about having a soul date back to the time of the Greek philosopher Socrates (469 to 399 BC) and his student Plato. It is reported that on his deathbed, Socrates was quite calm, and he attributed that state to his belief that he was going to a better place. Plato described conversations with Greek soldiers who had “died” on the battlefield and then came back. He said that “all earthly wisdom is but a rehearsal for that great awakening, an awakening that takes place upon death.”
I’m no stranger to the NDE phenomenon. For many years, I worked in emergency rooms, coronary and intensive care units, and cardiac catheterization labs where patients were suddenly brought back from the brink of death. I’ve heard nearly 20 NDE reports from heart attack survivors who subsequently became more intuitive, grounded, giving, and loving and less materialistic after visiting the other side. Simply put, they changed—as if their DNA (the blueprint of all life, giving instruction and function to living things) had been reshuffled. Some said they were “sent back” because it just wasn’t their time. Some were “told” they were to return to this life for the sake of someone else or to accomplish something more meaningful.
For example, there’s the story of Myrtle, a woman who grew up in rural Connecticut and traced her family lineage back to the Revolutionary War. She was a Daughter of the American Revolution, an accomplished violinist and horsewoman, and a person who lit up the room when she entered. She first came to me for help when she was in her early seventies.
Myrtle’s doctors had not been aggressive enough in diagnosing her new and persistent symptoms. She had her husband, Harvey—a country veterinarian who really knew his stuff—drive her more than an hour to my office for an urgent visit. She’d already had a coronary artery bypass operation, so she and Harvey were quite concerned.
I examined her and knew right away that she was in trouble. I heard turbulence in the right carotid artery in her neck, and that meant blood flow to her brain was in jeopardy. She needed to be seen by a neurologist—right away. An associate in nearby Hartford agreed to examine her that same day. It turned out that the artery was so critically blocked that my colleague rushed her to immediate emergency surgery. A skillful surgeon was able to quickly restore the circulation to her brain, but Myrtle endured a cardiac arrest in the process.
Two months later, she told me the story of what happened during the operation.
While being resuscitated, she felt herself leaving her body and floating up near the ceiling, accompanied by angelic beings. Looking down, Myrtle observed the doctors and nurses frantically trying to revive her. But she realized that Harvey was not with her. After 40 happy years of marriage, Harvey was her mate, partner, business associate, and best friend. As she took in what was happening, she made a proclamation inside her mind that she thought she was verbalizing out loud:
“Oh, no! I’m not going anywhere without Harvey!”
All of a sudden, she found herself back in her body! Myrtle made the conscious decision that she was not ready. She’d worked too hard to stay alive to that point, and the journey she started just didn’t feel “right” for her. So she decided to come back to her body.
In 2007, my own son, Step, weighing a mere 83 pounds and near death due to a perfect storm of metabolic, endocrine, and immune diseases, went out of body and seemingly crossed over and talked to both of his grandfathers. They gave him information that he would have had no way of knowing without that otherworldly experience. His maternal grandfather—we called him W. B.—was angry at Step, who, as a teenager, had treated his mom poorly. W. B. made Step promise “on Scout’s honor” that he’d always be good to his mother.
Step asked me, “Was W. B. ever a Boy Scout troop leader? Would he use the phrase ‘Scout’s honor’?”
“Yes, that was him!” I said, utterly blown away, since Step had no knowledge of his grandfather’s scouting background.
Step also communicated with my own dad, who said: “Tell your father [meaning me] that I’m sorry I didn’t go to his last high school wrestling match.”
Again, my son could not have known that my dad missed that match!
Reports of NDEs may seem like something alien to you, but I believe they are pieces of relevant evidence, chronicled throughout many centuries, that provide instructive perspective in man’s search for life’s overall meaning.
Once chalked up to being imagined or made up, NDEs are now being studied more seriously by scientists. Research published in the Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association has brought NDEs to light as events worthy of intense scientific study.
Several years ago, Tommy and I attended a Montreal conference that included lectures from international leaders in the area of NDEs. One of the speakers was Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist who interviewed 344 cardiac arrest patients and shared his findings (which were published in the Lancet in 2001) with us. In his presentation, van Lommel reviewed five typical elements of an NDE.
1.An out-of-body experience. People who have gone through a near-death experience feel that they have left their physical bodies. They can see what is happening around them or to their bodies but as though from an observer status, able to perceive their surroundings, resuscitation efforts, or surgery. Their attempts to communicate with the living people they can see and hear are unsuccessful. In these nonphysical bodies, they experience walking through walls or just “thinking” about a place and being teleported there. Notes van Lommel: “This out-of-body experience is scientifically important because doctors, nurses, and relatives can verify the reported perceptions.”
2.A holographic life review. People recall seeing their entire life flash before them, including every act and thought, all significant and all stored away.
3.An encounter with deceased relatives or a being of light. People who have had NDEs often recall recognizing and meeting deceased family members in an otherworldly dimension. They may also encounter a being of light, who might be an angel or a spiritual guide. All communication is wordless, through thought transfer only.
4.A return to the body. Some patients are able to describe how they returned to their physical bodies after being told telepathically by the being of light or a deceased family member that “it wasn’t their time yet” or that “they still had a task to fulfill.”
5.No more fear of death. Many people who have an NDE are no longer afraid of death. This is because their afterlife experience is so profound and real that they are sure that their spirit lives on, even if they have been declared dead by a doctor.
We were awestruck by what we heard at this conference. Tommy had experienced four out of the five NDE elements described by van Lommel!
Also, van Lommel told us that the patients repeatedly reported keen recollections of celestial experiences, even though their brains were clinically dead. He concluded that consciousness exists separately from the physical body and lives on after our earthly lives are over. In other words, death may end our physical bodies, but it isn’t the end of who we are. Our spirits live on—which is exactly what Tommy was told in Heaven.
I always listen keenly to any firsthand experience of another world that people have experienced so vividly at a time when the brain supposedly was not functioning, and I’ve studied this intriguing subject in my own practice. My fascination had long ago caused me to ask different, more probing questions about life, death, and what happens when we die.
Are we mortal or immortal? Is something tangible actually taking place that is beyond our perception, an experience that is outside the boundaries of life as we know it and occurs when high-tech monitors no longer register any proof of life? Was I really the one bringing these people back home? Since so many people around the world have survived near death and returned from a divine experience, then where is home, really? These were the questions that occupied my mind.
My belief in NDEs had caused me considerable criticism—in large part from people who were appalled that I, a respected cardiologist and certified psychotherapist, could possibly believe in such “unscientific” phenomena.
I can’t say I’m surprised by that attitude. As a physician, I know that the consensus of my profession is that we discount such experiences as dreams, interruptions in brain currents, hallucinations, and out-and-out fabrications. But because so many of my resuscitated patients recalled similar scientifically inexplicable phenomena, I was able to accept NDEs as truth. However, I had never seen a case like Tommy’s, in which someone returned with so much newfound understanding of the body and its mysterious workings.
Everything Tommy told me about the fundamentals of health and healing in Heaven made real sense to me, probably because I had been practicing a similar set of theories here on Earth for decades.
You see, a long time ago, I realized that to be a truly better doctor, I needed to find ways to not just treat heart disease and other illnesses but actually prevent them in the first place. This realization was both a revelation and a no-brainer at the same time.
I’m a traditionally trained MD and longtime proponent of modern medical techniques and surgical interventions for one simple reason: They work. But I also have always known that rescuing and healing should involve more than just medical heroics. They must also be about exploring every option to keep people strong and healthy.
My approach served as a strong foundation for my interest in the relationship between behavioral and characterological traits and disease states in the body, such as the type A personality and heart disease. Someone with a type A personality is competitive, an overachiever, a hard worker, hostile, impatient—and a person who believes that thinking is more important than feeling. And, yes, people of this “type” are more prone to heart disease; they strive to succeed without complete satisfaction or fulfillment, so much so that they deny and suppress feelings of fatigue and exhaustion, sadness, isolation, and even the physical discomforts in the chest that may be early warning signs of heart disease.
To establish health and balance within a person, the physical, mental, and emotional parts must be reintegrated—and doing so became the focus of my career as a physician and psychotherapist.
In truth, it takes commitment, emphasis, and effort to maintain your health. And it takes knowledge. You have to be aware of what is good for you and what is harmful. This can be challenging in our modern world, compared with the earliest days of our existence, when we were still hunters and gatherers and no one had to go to a gym to get exercise. Daily life was filled with running, climbing, gathering food, and escaping visible dangers like hungry predators.
Today, the dangers are less visible and obvious, but they are everywhere and increasing: We are all exposed to nutrient-stripped processed food; genetically modified organisms (GMOs) used to produce food; polluted water and air; heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and cadmium; insecticides and chemicals; cordless phones and cell phone towers; and more. Modern life and technologies are flooding the human body with toxic, unnatural elements and frequencies that cause insidious silent but deadly inflammation in the body. The list goes on and on.
With all these issues being so real, I began to emphasize many preventive measures in my practice, encouraging my patients to protect themselves from these outside influences. For example, I’d advise choosing noninflammatory, nonsugary, non-GMO organic foods such as golden organic flaxseed, extra virgin olive oil, organic kiwifruit, blueberries or blackberries, and wild migratory salmon or sardines, and adding more healthy fats, such as omega-3s, and other dietary supplements to support heart function and overall health. For those especially prone to musculoskeletal pain and weakness, I’d emphasize a similar diet, along with the avoidance of caffeine, alcohol, and food coloring and dyes, as well as toxic electric and magnetic fields, or EMFs (from cell phones, computers, and other modern-day technologies), the last of which can have a negative effect on heart rate variability (the beat-to-beat alterations in heart rate) and other aspects of health.
Most incredibly, much of this information was revealed to Tommy in Heaven!
In fact, my three most important discoveries over 40-plus years of practicing medicine were validated by Tommy’s lessons in Heaven: that we can revitalize an ailing heart by natural means, that we can protect the body from illness by physically reconnecting with the Earth’s energy field, and that there is a link between heartbreak and heart disease.
I was so moved by Tommy’s experience that I confessed to him that I would trade all of my accomplishments for just one day in Heaven. I think Tommy knew then that I believed him with all of my heart.
What happened to Tommy is an extraordinary experience, an interaction with the divine that led to profound revelations about health and healing that are themselves true and all-encompassing. What is more amazing is how specific these revelations were—which is one of the most fascinating features of Tommy’s story—and how related they were to what I had been telling my patients for years! You shall soon read about the similarities between the revelations given to Tommy and what I have written about in my previous books, including Reversing Heart Disease, Metabolic Cardiology, The Great Cholesterol Myth, Sugar Shock, Earthing, Heartbreak and Heart Disease, and more.
But as a preview: These revelations involved learning to let go of fear and learning to have faith. Tommy learned how we are all connected and that everything we do—good or bad—creates a ripple effect. He was made aware that everything is energy, that we determine our own physical toxicity on Earth by our actions, that we need to take care of our bodies, that our thoughts are powerful, that we have guardian angels, that life’s purpose is to live through the heart, and that the only important thing in life is unconditional love. These were the lessons and messages that guided Tommy’s return to life.
Tommy and I shared this material with doctors, healers, friends, and family. They were fascinated. They were moved. They were spurred to change the way they were living. They clung to this sacred information. That’s when we knew that we had to bring this gift of healing knowledge to the world.
We felt that the best way to do this was through a book that could reach many people, and so we began our collaboration—one that would take us through many drafts in order to finally organize and “birth” what you are holding in your hands. We talked intensely about his experience. I shared my corroborating experiences as a cardiologist. We pored over journals and articles that matched exactly what Tommy was told in Heaven. Together we worked on presenting a linear story, beginning with what Heaven looks like and moving on to each of the revelations.
Our book addresses some fundamental yet unique questions about how to prevent health problems, heal those that arise, and stay healthy for as long as we are on Earth. It directly covers nutrition, as well as thoughts on health and healing, love, fear, the path to purpose, and other issues that deeply affect our lives.
During Tommy’s stay in Heaven, eight revelations of good health were imprinted onto his psyche. They were amazingly specific and completely supported by what we know from biology, chemistry, and physics. This fact is one of the most fascinating parts of Tommy’s experience; in a way, he returned from his journey with a nuanced understanding that takes medical professionals years to develop. In this book, you will read about those revelations and Tommy’s journey through Heaven. After each revelation, I will show you how it is scientifically and medically validated through clinical research, as well as through my own experiences as a cardiologist. Then I’ll give you recommendations on how to apply the revelation to your own life, with specific actions you can take, affirmations you can use, and simple exercises you can employ.
With the help of these divine revelations and their applications, you’ll discover that you have the spiritually inspired power to heal aspects of your health and, indeed, your life. Filled with timeless knowledge and practical steps you can take right away, this is a book you’ll want to refer to again and again and keep close to your heart. Read these revelations with an open mind, and know that your life will be fuller and healthier for it.
Dr. Stephen T. Sinatra