UNEXPECTED PARENTHESES
This project focuses on the theme of near-death experiences (NDEs). Individuals who have had an NDE are those who, after being declared clinically dead, report having had an out-of-body experience and a series of visions or feelings on other planes of consciousness. They are called experiencers.
People who have an NDE have an intense and deeply meaningful inner experience. It often turns their lives upside down by transforming their value system with regard to life and death.
To their dismay, this phenomenon remains an anomaly of conventional science, and the scientific community often classifies their experience as a psychic hallucination or a form of oneirism. However, more and more neuroscientific researches are seeking to explain the phenomenon and to establish the link between the visible and the invisible.
Is human consciousness immortal in nature or is it generated solely by the neurological processes of the brain?
Here are some people who have lived this extraordinary experience.
AMÉLIE P BÉDARD
Amélie's father commits suicide when she is just over a year old. In her teens, on a snowy spring evening, she runs away into the forest. She hopes to rejoin her father by swallowing the family pharmacy. After writing her farewell letter everything becomes very bright and warm. A soft amber light. Instantly she is faced with the choice of leaving her life on earth or staying. Although the call to go through that door is inviting, she makes the fundamental choice to live and drags herself to the street, where passers-by in a car find her. She will be hospitalized in child psychiatry for several weeks, and even if the desire to die will reappear, she will never attempt suicide again.
STEVE BRETON
It's a summer night, Steve is 17 and celebrating the end of school with his friends. Despite the storm outside, he leaves the party alone and goes out barefoot. The electrostatic charge in the air is high and the ground is heavily wet. As Steve approaches a metal pavilion, a bolt of lightning strikes nearby. He is hit and passes out. Like an ultra lucid dream, the moments follow one another at full speed. He revisits relationships, memories and fantasies from the past. He returns to the party where he hears echoes of conversation as if he were in a parallel dimension. Then he gradually detaches himself from the people and places, does a free fall without gravity, and finds himself in a place of pure whiteness. There follows a journey at the speed of light through a funnel of memory that takes him back to his family and cosmic roots. It is then that his friends wake him up by shaking him. He has no immediate memory and it will take several months for him to remember his experience.
STÉPHANIE CARRIÈRES
When Stéphanie is 8 years old, her mother tries to commit suicide in the garage of the family home. She locks herself in the car with the engine running, while her daughters sleep in the rooms above. Stephanie remembers floating above her sister and mother through the thick fog of the smoke-filled house. It was a space without time, and even now she doesn't know how long that moment really lasted. When she returns to her body, she manages to wake up her sister and get her mother out of the car. The whole family will survive the event.
MARYSE LEGAGNEUR
Maryse's life changes in 2008, while she is staying in a Benedictine monastery in Belgium. Following a moment of extreme weakness caused by her anorexia, she begins to float above her bed and sees her body from the ceiling. A geyser of loving energy propels her into a state of grace. Then, she finds herself in the nearby chapel. Invisible, she slouches on the benches with insolence in front of the nuns and the tourists who do not see her. A profound cosmic journey follows, filled with insights into the knowledge of humanity. According to her, death as we understand it does not exist. Life is a thousand times more vibrant on the other side. It's like being awakened from a narrow dream. In the years that will follow, Maryse will participate in the scientific researches led by Dr. Mario Beauregard and will found an organization to help people who have experienced an NDE.
NICOLE LAMONTAGNE
During a dental procedure, Nicole, who is 9 years old at the time, receives an overdose of medication. She begins to float and sees her body from above. Her entire being becomes pixelated and she finds herself surrounded by waves of pixels. As her life flashes by on a screen, a glow from afar draws her in. She is absorbed by the light, then finds herself in a space where time does not exist and love is intense. She feels at home. Although the physical existence remains difficult for Nicole, this experience will have a profound influence on her practice as a professional dancer and choreographer.
NICOLE CANIVENQ
Nicole is returning from a job interview when her car violently hits a tree. She immediately finds herself in a space where all her landmarks are upside down: the meadow above and the sky below. When she tries to roll over to get back upright, she realizes that she no longer has a body. The grass seems alive to her and endowed with a particular conscience. At the contact of luminous beings, she feels an extraordinary and indescribable love on earth. Like a return to her true home. A fireman dispatched to the accident helps her come back to herself. After a long road of rehabilitation and healing, her life changes completely. Today she is a shaman, sophrologist, author and lecturer on the subject.
CAROL ARPIN
On May 1, 1980 Carol is hospitalized for a hysterectomy. During the procedure, she sees herself from above. Her body is lying on the operating table while the doctor tries to resuscitate her. She is drawn to a bright, beautiful light at the end of a tunnel. In its presence her well-being is total. She no longer feels any pain and an inner peace that is unknown on earth envelops her. "You have a child who needs you" the surgeon repeatedly tells her, bringing her back to life. Six months of depression will follow. When she is nostalgic for this place Carol knits.
MARINE GROSPEILLER
In 2017, while participating in an indigenous sweat lodge ceremony, Marine loses consciousness and collapses on the hot stone ritual. She immediately feels sucked in and finds herself lying in a field of daisies, with a strange feeling of being home. The grass is a luminous color, strangely translucent. She feels in a total confidence, an energy of love and peace. Her perceptions are different. A young boy approaches her and smiles. He is handsome and looks familiar. He makes her feel the importance of having confidence in her and in life. When he leaves, he is replaced by a divine being who envelops her with unconditional love. Even if this being does not speak to her, she understands that she is only of passage and, at the very moment, her name is called. She will later discover that this being has given her the gift of healing. Marine will receive five skin grafts without ever suffering from pain. She has since developed her practice as an energy therapist and has written a book about her experience.
ANDREA COUREY
It is during a snowstorm one evening, more than thirty years ago, that Andrea is hit by a car. She immediately feels sucked into a vortex and finds herself surrounded by a bright light. From above, she sees her coat on the ground, the broken glass of the windshield, and the whole earthly mess. She tries to tell the people rushing to the scene that she is safe, but no one can hear her. That's when she realizes she's dead. She has no pain and feels very small in front of this powerful light. Since her accident, Andrea has sought to help people reduce their fear of death. She is an author, speaker and offers workshops on the afterlife and sound healing meditations.
GILLES BÉDARD & ISABELLE IMBERT
At the age of 19, Gilles is hospitalized during several months for a disease of the digestive system. When he falls into a coma, the doctors believe he is facing death and his entire family gathers in the room to attend an extreme unction ceremony. Gilles floats above them. He feels the breath and absolute sound of the universe, with which he becomes One. Then, he finds himself in front of twelve beings of light who explain to him he will have to return in order to pursue his personal quest. He will hear "Be the sound" before returning into his body. Gilles has been developing methods of personal transformation through sound and contemplative music since 1991. He is also an author and speaker on the subject.
Isabelle is a bank manager and mother of two young children when she suffers a serious paragliding accident. On the moment, she sees herself from a small point above. Attracted by a bright light, she is instantly sucked into a golden tunnel. There she feels an unconditional love and an indescribable serenity. Brought back to the hospital by helicopter, she will be in a coma for 5 days and will make several back and forth between our plane and the beyond. When her deceased grandfather tells her to go back down, she finds herself sucked back into her body. It makes her feel like she's wearing wet jeans that are too small. After a long rehabilitation process, she leaves everything to study Ayurveda in India and has been providing Ayurvedic treatments ever since.
Gilles and Isabelle met at a conference on NDEs. They now share their life between Canada and France where they have created a therapeutic center.
SAMUEL JOLY
In 2019 Samuel undergoes open heart surgery. He has the impression that his consciousness splits in two and that he witnesses it from above. He watches his life unfold on a screen, seeing all the key moments and people he has loved. A year later, during an ayahuasca ceremony in the forest, he relives the same out-of-body experience and reconnects with the beyond. It is a space of bright light and incomprehensibly great love. A dimension where the colors are different from those on earth and where information comes to him.
RAD HOURANI
At the age of 16, Rad is pulled to the bottom of the pool by a drowning teenager. While trying to help him, he drowns himself. He enters a state of total panic: he knows this is the end, this is death. He then sees a tunnel of bright golden light, in which he travels at an unmeasurable speed. He no longer sees his physical body: he is no longer himself, no longer has he an ego, no longer has he a brain. He realizes that he is pure energy, love and light, that he is one with all that is, that he is one. As he emerges from the tunnel, he finds himself in front of a vast blue sky, atop tall coniferous, from where he hears chants that sound Romani to him. As he gets closer to the chanting, he becomes unified with its vibration, eventually vibrating the chant itself. The lifeguard pulls him out of the pool when he's already blue. It will take one week before he is able to walk and to function normally, and he won’t remember this experience until 18 years later. Shortly after his NDE, at the age of 23, an external energy drives him to become an interdisciplinary artist and to develop the first non-binary patterns to promote gender equality through his unisex collections. It’s not a conscious choice, it’s stronger than himself! He engages in creation to address the theme of neutrality and to eradicate all fragmentations because, for him, any division creates violence. Rad, for whom these values of unity are ever-present, is today a well-established artist in the international community.