Lately, I have been listening to a podcast featuring interviews with people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). There is something deeply soothing and healing in hearing first-hand accounts from people who have glimpsed what lies beyond the “veil.” These stories help one remember who we are beyond the limitations of form, as well as why we have chosen to participate in the earthly game. For me, there is an added bonus: they nourish the curiosity of the inner researcher of the human psyche. Every account of the “other side” is different—subjectively colored—and this allows for comparison and psychological reflection.
Out of all the interviews, one touched me most deeply: the conversation with Christian Sundberg, who speaks about his memories from before birth. When he speaks, one does not merely understand intellectually—one can almost feel the energy from the other side of the veil: the energy of love, and the inspiration born from the immense creative possibilities that human life offers.
Below, I will share the core messages of what he says, followed by my own reflections.
“To be human is like being given the winning lottery ticket.”
This was the message that moved me most strongly, because it helps one remember why we are on Earth: the soul’s excitement about the adventure of life in a world of duality.
I felt this most vividly when Sundberg described an encounter he had before his first incarnation on Earth. He met a being who radiated such extraordinary joy and inner strength that he asked—telepathically, as communication in that dimension is—
“My God, what must you have done to become like this? Do you really feel as much joy and strength as I sense in you?”
The answer was yes. And the reason, the being explained, was that he had incarnated on this special place—Earth. His most important incarnation had also been his most difficult: a life marked by long-term, severe chronic illness. Yet through the intention with which he bore that suffering, he transformed it into the inner strength that Sundberg now perceived.
At that moment, Sundberg said to himself:
“I want to do this. I want to do it. I will do it.”
And he did.
This present life is not his first incarnation on Earth, but it is special because it offered him the opportunity to experience the densest and deepest form of fear. His initial resistance was so strong that the incarnation occurred only on a second attempt and under different conditions. Until the age of four, he retained memories of the “other side,” but then forgot them. The trauma that activated his experience of fear occurred when he was twenty. Only ten years later—after working through much of that fear—the memory returned. With it came the recollection of the purpose of this life and the immense opportunity hidden within difficult experiences:
“So immense that it literally takes your breath away.”
It becomes clear that things look very different on the other side of the veil. Naturally, one wonders why this veil exists at all, and why forgetting is necessary.
Sundberg explains that the contrast between “there” and “here” is so vast that a human being could not bear it. Incarnation is a radical contraction—
“as if you were stuffed into a tuna can.”
Once you pass through the veil, everything you knew disappears, including the sense of unity with all that is. The feeling is that you have lost everything you are. This is why we forget: remembering would be profoundly disabling. Knowledge of “there” would make it impossible to want to remain “here.”
In this sense, being veiled protects us from homesickness for Home, where the depth of joy and love is unimaginably vast.
Another reason for forgetting is that to fully experience the human condition, one must become human—completely immersed in the human perspective. But full immersion erases the spiritual perspective, which is precisely where the resources lie for meeting fear and pain. Thus, the other side of the equation is equally necessary: we must also retain some remembrance of our spiritual roots.
“You are a multidimensional being having a human experience—and there is nothing to fear.”
This is the sentence Sundberg wanted to print on flyers and drop into people’s mailboxes after his memories returned. And it makes sense, because the root of human fear is the feeling of separation from Source. When that connection is restored, fear begins to dissolve.
Instead of leaflets, he eventually found other ways to speak—he wrote a book. This interview is also part of that courage. In it, he says:
“Not many souls can come to this level of separation… it’s like jumping into open space… why would I want to feel so separate from everything? Physical incarnation is like leaping out into the sky.”
Such separation generates enormous fear. And this is precisely where the value of remembering the other side becomes clear:
“Our fear cannot destroy us. We are larger, deeper… consciousness is deeper than the deepest fear. We need to allow it to be there and feel it. If we allow ourselves to feel it now, it heals all similar moments.”
“Love is the ultimate purpose of life.”
One question the podcast host asks every guest is what they believe the purpose of life to be. Sundberg answers immediately, without hesitation:
“The ultimate purpose of life is love.”
But not romantic love, not affection for puppies, not even parental love—rather Love with a capital “L.” Love expressed as humility, compassion, gentleness, strength, perseverance. In short, love is the choice we make in difficult situations when we act against fear and ego-defenses.
As he puts it:
“The question is not how you feel. The question is what you do with what is happening—can you meet this moment with love rather than fear?”
Another way he defines love is through actions imbued with the quality of intention we bring even into the smallest moments. This, he says, is the essence of the earthly game:
“We can be free here, on Earth. We can embody our true loving essence in a human context. That is what matters most.”
The external conditions—the extreme limitations of earthly existence—create the necessary context for this choice. They are the illusion that helps us develop something beyond illusion: something enduring, something we can carry with us beyond the veil.
The entire interview is well worth listening to and watching. Here is the link:
My Reflections
Like a Spirit in a Bottle
These are my reflections. One part of them concerns the role and function of near-death experiences. My assumption is that such experiences occur when a person needs help from “the other side of the veil” in order to take the next step in life. They are invariably marked by profound transformation—this is the one thing all interviewees have in common: after such an event, they are no longer the same.
I also thought about the near-death experience that Carl Jung had in early 1944, while he was in hospital following a heart attack. He, too, wrote that after this experience he felt greater strength and courage to articulate his ideas and to trust the flow of his own thinking.
I have reread many times the chapter “Visions” from his autobiography, where he describes his encounter with death in detail, because there is much to be learned from it. For me, the most valuable insight was that it helped me understand the archetypal source of endogenous depressions, and why they are an inevitable part of the beginning of every spiritual awakening—that is, the beginning of the individuation process.
In spiritual traditions, these depressions are called “the dark night of the soul,” but I personally prefer the alchemical term nigredo (or calcination). Being so close to the collective psyche (in this interview referred to as “the other side of the veil,” or “the beyond”) intensifies the experience of contrast between “there” and “here.” It is precisely this contrast that is experienced as depression: a feeling of compression, heaviness, constriction.
I have written a separate article on this topic, where I explore these experiences not only in Jung, but also in Gopi Krishna. The article is titled “Like a Spirit in a Bottle.”
The Spiritual Bypass
The second part of my reflections concerns love—specifically, the answer Christian Sundberg gives to the question of the meaning of human life. For me as well, the purpose of incarnation in a human body is to bring love down to Earth. Love is the true reward for “stuffing the spirit into the tin can of matter.”
The crucial question, however, is: what is love? Because its spiritual dimension is very different from the ego’s notion of love as simply “being loved.”
There is also a fundamental difference between “love on the other side of the veil” and “love on this side of the veil.” The embodiment of the archetype of love in the world of duality has very little in common with the transpersonal experiences of expansion, unity, and bliss described by many of the podcast guests—including Christian Sundberg.
Transpersonal experiences of love have their value: they reveal a deeper dimension of life and remind us of its deeper meaning. But they are not the final destination of the spiritual path—and can even become a detour from it. If they were the goal, incarnation would not be necessary; we would still remain in the paradise of undifferentiated unity. That paradise is precisely “love on the other side of the veil.” It is the experience of connectedness on the level of the collective unconscious. The incarnation of the soul, by contrast, is a fall from this paradise for the purpose of generating consciousness.
The conscious form of love—“love on this side of the veil”—is fundamentally different from unconscious love. Its essence lies in the integration of opposites within oneself and therefore necessarily includes experiences of hell. For this reason, I would like to recall another article on my website dealing with what is known as “ spiritual bypass”.
Understanding this phenomenon has helped me greatly in my work as a psychotherapist, particularly in learning how to work with transpersonal experiences within the process of spiritual awakening—a process that Maslow described as the transition from self-actualization to self-transcendence, and Jung called the process of individuation.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
