Testimony – NDE survivor of an accident in Nepal on the night of October 31, 1989
I had set out to trek in Nepal and try to reach Tibet (far more isolated and difficult to access in those days). I flew direct from Paris to New Delhi and, after a few days in India, traveled by alternating train and bus toward the Indo-Nepalese border. The crossing was tense—the two countries were in conflict—and I had to wait until late in the day to catch a coach bound for Kathmandu.
The plan was to arrive in the morning after an overnight journey. I sat next to a French globetrotter I’d befriended during the long border wait. The bus was old, overcrowded, with luggage piled on the roof.
Early in the night we stopped at a village for dinner. A few travelers opted to sleep in a local hotel and take another coach the next morning. My new French friend suggested I do the same—the night road was uncomfortable—but I was too impatient to reach my destination and pressed on alone.
We resumed the journey on an unpaved road, jolting and bouncing so much it was impossible to sleep. We were climbing the Himalayan foothills toward Kathmandu at about 1 500 m altitude.
After some time, the bus suddenly stopped. We were told to disembark in the middle of the night on a mountain stretch we’d been traversing for hours, halfway between India and Kathmandu. The coach had broken down.
After waiting in the cold night for what felt like forever, a few of us decided to try and board a minibus that appeared ready to go. I climbed up onto the roof of the stranded coach to retrieve my bag—unaware the driver had climbed in to try restarting the engine.
The moment I reached the roof, the engine roared to life. The shoulder was unstable; I felt the bus lurch and then tilt over in an instant. In a fraction of a second I realized with horror that the bus was plunging down a ravine—and that I was on top of it.
I tried to throw myself as far as possible, but the vehicle’s weight and tilt dragged me downhill. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning—terrified—and then time seemed to freeze.
My first thought: “It would be so stupid to die at twenty-five.” Then I felt myself literally—and metaphorically—slip into another dimension, a new kind of awareness.
I watched my life flash before me in a strange distortion of time where I could linger over details even as everything sped by—like an action scene in super slow-motion. I was acutely aware of this life review, and I was devastated at the thought of how miserably my parents and loved ones would suffer if I died. I felt hyper-conscious, with an entirely altered sense of time and space.
Yet as I thought how cruelly sad it would be for them, a gentle, almost sweet sensation arose: maybe dying wasn’t so terrible after all. I felt an overwhelming, unique love—a universal bliss.
Then I hit the ground after roughly a ten-meter fall. Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. I even had time to think, “Am I alive or not?” as the coach began to crush me. And then—nope. That was it.
In that moment I saw myself float out of my body and pass through the side-lying bus beneath me. It was strange, yet pleasant and familiar. I hovered above my body, watching the scene below, while drawn toward a white light where I sensed the presence of gentle souls or benevolent beings. There was no pain—only absolute calm and fullness. I was pulled toward a dazzling, warm, comforting point of light, traveling through a luminous tunnel accompanied by presences that felt like family. They looked human yet radiant—beings of light.
It felt like I was returning to a place deep within me, a dimension I knew well. The certainty struck me: “This is our true world, our home!” I’d never felt so good—so profoundly moved. That moment seemed both instantaneous and eternal. I floated through space at incredible speed, bathed in harmony and eternal love. Words fail to capture it. I also sensed access to infinite knowledge; everything was clear, simple, self-evident—like an instant, innate understanding of universal truths.
But just as I neared what I perceived as the “entrance” to this gentle, luminous, wonderful world, I became aware again of my body crushed beneath the bus far below—it already felt distant, almost trivial.
Several familiar souls or beings stood between me and that entrance. I received a direct message in my mind, as if multiple clear voices said: “No, it’s not your time. You must return.” Instantly my vision snapped back to the earthly scene, and, as if attached to a reversed bungee cord, my spirit was yanked back into my body with brutal speed.
The return to life was terrifying. I had a crystal-clear vision of my predicament: trapped, limbs entangled and crushed between the vegetation and the heavy vehicle. I had survived, but I was stuck at the bottom of a Nepalese ravine, under a bus!
Desperate and stunned, all I could do was scream—though my eyes saw nothing. Yet curiously I perceived everything as if I had a third eye, levitating. I sensed people above me—they had climbed into the side-lying bus. It was as though I viewed them in 360° vision.
I understood I was wedged at a window and that my only chance was to break the glass and cut away the vegetation (branches that had softened my fall) with a saw. A Nepali engineer and a Belgian fellow traveler took my instructions and, with help from locals, set to work.
It was a long process. I managed to give clear orders to people far more panicked than I was, despite my position. My mind was razor-sharp; I saw everything in vivid detail. My rescuers hesitated—overwhelmed and shocked—and for a moment I thought they might give up.
But I was fiercely determined. I knew exactly what had to be done. Face caked in dirt and mud, I spoke loudly and confidently, convinced I would survive.
After several hours they finally smashed the window and freed me from beneath it. I lay inside the bus, on its side, and they attempted to lift me—but I was too injured. Again I directed them: “Dismantle a seat and use it as a stretcher.”
They carried me to the road. As I lay there in pain, I was amazed to see dozens of Nepalese farmers and fellow passengers silhouetted against the morning sky, all smiling and applauding. It was a wonderful sensation—I was deeply moved and I wept. I knew I had made it.
I was then transported to the Japanese hospital in Kathmandu and placed under care there. Two remarkable people supported me throughout: the French consul and the consulate’s doctor.
Despite intense pain, I quickly learned I had “only a few broken bones”—nothing truly irreversible.
In my hospital room, I first experienced a strange, unreal moment, my mind drifting between the lingering sensation of my near-death experience and my return to real life.
I felt surprisingly well—partly thanks to the opioids prescribed to ease the pain, and partly because of the incredible awareness that I had come back from so far away.
Within a few days, I was fully myself again. I was certainly buoyed by the many visitors—nurses, expatriates, and fellow patients—who came to see me.
News of the accident spread quickly. Even in Nepal, surviving being crushed under a bus is extremely rare. I may have been seen as something of a “miracle survivor.”
I remained in Kathmandu for about a week before being flown back to Paris by a medical team.
Within months I made a complete recovery, and then resumed my life as if nothing had happened.
For years afterward, I would still recount my “adventure” when friends asked—but I always downplayed the NDE portion. I could see how hard it was for people to understand or take seriously, and I even felt a slight shame about it.
To everyone—including myself—I had simply been lucky. What I’d felt and seen must have been an hallucination, a brain flooded with endorphins to cope with shock and pain.
Having little interest in spirituality, I nearly forgot what happened for the next 33 years.
Deep down, though, I hadn’t entirely forgotten. I sometimes wondered what my life’s purpose might be—surely if I had been “spared,” it was to do something meaningful in this world. Even when I set aside the spiritual dimension of my ordeal, it tugged at me more than I admitted.
For three decades I found no meaning in it, and I felt I was missing something. I carried a persistent guilt and a quiet sadness.
On the other hand, I always felt a bit like an observer of my own life, never fully engaged. A few years ago I realized that this detachment must stem from what happened in Nepal. Before the accident, I remember being more connected to the world, more involved. Yet others saw me as unwaveringly optimistic—sometimes almost excessively so. Interestingly, research is now beginning to show that NDEs themselves can be a risk factor for mood disorders.
Then, at the end of October 2022, my wife read an article about Dr. Christophe Fauré’s new book, “This Life and Beyond.” Strangely, despite my inner turmoil and my own experience, I’d never been particularly interested in such topics—they seemed a bit too esoteric to me.
Almost on a whim, I decided I had to read the book. I bought it the very next day, its release date—and only then did I realize that it had been almost exactly 33 years since my NDE.
From the moment I began reading, I felt strangely—and powerfully—connected to every page. I was moved by the testimonies, and I had a revelation—a shock.
Within hours I sensed that part of my mind, my “outer” consciousness, was awakening and reconnecting. I perceived it as somewhat dissociated from my ordinary thinking mind. The book’s final chapters discussed post-materialism and universal consciousness—concepts I had never encountered before. Suddenly, they felt intimately familiar, as if they were obvious truths.
Since then, I feel I’ve undergone a liberating, joyful transformation that has brought me closer to others and more in tune with myself. Curiously, I feel “awakened.” That insight led me to found emiste.com.
— Philippe Malbrunot
Drawing by one of my rescuers who came to visit me in the hospital. A depiction of my position under the bus as he saw it. The accident occurred near Galchhi, 50 km west of Kathmandu.
8 jdays after the accident in Katmandou, just before being repatriated to France