I was in war zones in and out for 24 years, so I'm a very direct person.
With the thought that if I hold back from you or I don't share information with you,
that could get you killed. Jim Burton's Near-Death Experience (NDE). I got my pilot's license in the
late 90s. And starting in, I guess it was 2004, I started building a World War One
fighter aircraft called a Fokker Triplane. It had three wings, very distinctive. You know, I built
my macho fighter plane that looks really cool, and then I thought, well, now I'm going to build
the whimsical airplane. It looks like it came out of a Disney cartoon. And it was only on my
second flight that I lost my engine. Because the shape of the fuselage, the body of the aircraft,
was kind of like a boat at the front, I thought, well, I can't make it back to my airstrip,
you know, my dead engine, so I'll aim for this small lake at the nearby Boy Scout camp
What happened... It was... I almost succeeded. I overshot the bank of the lake,
and I crashed into all these trees at 70 miles an hour in the equivalent of a Soapbox Derby
car with a big motorcycle engine and spinning propeller right in front of my face. I don't
know how I did eat it. I ruptured both my lungs and broke all my ribs. My right leg
had multiple fractures. My chin was all torn up, and I had a hole in my lower back from the battery
breaking loose and hitting me. Again about 70 miles an hour. Lucky for me, there would...
Even though the Boy Scout camp was closed at that time of year. Being October, there was one guy
fishing there. And what made it lucky for me was not only was he there, but he was a retired police
officer. You can imagine if somebody watched a plane crash and then saw somebody like I
described I was in that crash, you can imagine a lot of people would just freak out. Yeah. Being a
retired police officer he'd probably seen trauma in car accidents or abuse. I mean he... You know,
he was used to shifting gears into that mindset and lucky for me had his phone on him that day,
his cell phone. Normally he left it in his truck because he likes his peace and quiet,
but he did have it on him, so he was able to call 9-1-1. And Livestar sent a helicopter
in to pull me out, and then they flew me up to Hartford, Connecticut to the trauma center there.
My near-death experience is pretty different than a lot of people's
near-death experiences are stories of where one way or other people arrive at the door of
death. Whether it's an accident, whether it's a disease, whether it's, you know,
they fell down the stairs or just, it just spontaneously happened. But a lot of times,
you know, they talk about going through a tunnel, seeing dead loved ones. Seeing
Angelic or beautiful beings and getting a life review maybe they get a big message or
make a big choice and then they come back. For me, no tunnel, no dead loved ones,
no life review. it was like I teleported, and boom! I'm somewhere else immediately.
And I was up on a terrace of a tall building in a ruined landscape. Imagine biggest city you've
ever seen. Imagine it a thousand years after a nuclear blast or the meteor strike or something
like that. I mean absolute ruins! And so as I'm looking out across this these deep dark clouds are
above me like the mother of all storms is getting ready to break loose. I mean it's it's scary! Just
looking at these clouds could be frightening. I wasn't frightened, but I'm saying it could be.
All of a sudden I felt this wave of nausea go through my stomach. And I thought I don't
think I can stand this! And I said this out loud. And when I did I heard the sound off
to my left. And I look along the terrace and parked a little distance away, not too far,
was a large like egg shaped sculpture. I would say it was like four or five stories high.
And because it was made out of lattice work I could see through it. So like it was made out
of these bands right? And as I could see through it. I could see into it and I saw these little
movements. So I thought, well what's this all about. It's the only interesting thing going
on right? Because the whole city's dead. So I walked over there and I looked through the
latticework and there were these particular kind of gears called sector gears. When you think of a
gear you think of a circle with all these little teeth, the sector gear is a partial, it's a
section of the gears. And it's usually meant to move back and forth. You might see this in like
a motorcycle transmission. You will definitely see them in clock-like mechanisms or in clocks.
As I looked at them some were very clear and definite. Some were very like ghosts like but
they would just pass through each other. And they were kind of freely suspended in the air.
I was very confused about what it was so I reached through to see if I could touch one
and when I did, one brushed by my hand and I got another wave of nausea. And when that happened
I instinctively grabbed it and pulled it through the lattice, and threw it away. I don't know how I
knew I could do that or why I would do that, but I did it. And when I did that all the gears started
madly spinning around like they were recalibrating for the loss of one. And at that point I said,
What is this thing? And then this voice came that stayed with me through the entire experience. And
it said, "This is the process of becoming. This is the future birthing into the now." And I said,
"You know I really don't understand. Like where am?" And it said, "You're in the in-between." And
I said, "In between what?" It said, "Everything." It said, "You're standing inside the eternity of
a single moment." And I said, "That makes no sense whatsoever." And it said, "Well
do you remember the body to which your spirit belongs?" And I really remember thinking about,
I have no clue! I have no clue! I am just here. I am present. And it said,
"Then you see the truth and how the past is dust." If someone had come up to me and said,
"If you stay here longer you can't go back." I literally would have said, "Go back where? To
your family. To Earth. To your life. I've would've been, "What family? What Earth? What life?" I'm
just going gonna say it, I was that depersonalized and disassociated. I wouldn't know my name!
As I looked at the gears I could actually see a video feed playing in my head of what each one
represented. I realized, "Oh these are events in my future!" And the reason I knew it was my future
is because in a couple of the gears I might see my children grown up with their own children,
and myself is older. So okay, so this is in my future. So I said, you know,
"What happened when I touched that one gear and I felt bad?" And it said, "All choices have
unintended consequences. Some good, some not good. By reaching through and touching the different
possible futures... These are possible outcomes. The ones that were definite are more likely. The
ones that were ghost like were less likely, or further out in time. Basically said, "How did I
know I could remove that bad future? The one that would make me feel bad in the future? And it said,
"Why else are you here?" I said, "I have no clue!" And it said, "Well this is why you're here. You've
been given a chance essentially to stack the deck for your future." We can't say wrong decisions
because you can make a wrong decision and there's no sin. You know, I mean you could just say I
thought I was going to turn right and I turned left and I had a car accident. Well it wasn't
your fault so there's no sin. But a bad decision is... That's where you might you know we're in a
certain degree of ambiguity or they're moral or ethics concerned. Or maybe there's no ambiguity
you just said I just want to do that thing anyway. I don't care who it hurts. I don't care if it's
good or bad, I just want to do it. That's a bad decision. So being human, I mean we all
face those choices. There's no sin to be tempted it's just... It's just one to say I'm gonna do it.
So I was able to use pain as my guide. I didn't have some great moral compass. I didn't have a
religious ideologue. I didn't have a mantra. You know it's pain. Because that's pretty sure. You
don't really argue with pain, right? You could argue otherwise. Like why does this choice that
won me a lottery ticket, why is that making me feel bad? Because you're going to become
the biggest jerk in the world who's ever lived! Well you can imagine most of us would say, "No I
won't! I promise! Let me have it!" But if you feel the outcome of that decision, if you feel the pain
that you're going to cause you're not arguing with anybody! Pretty damn clear! Basically,
I just kept reaching through the egg and finding gears that hurt, pulled them out, and watched the
damn thing just recycle over and over and over and over again. And had an ongoing conversation with
this voice. At one point I turned around and I saw this huge growing pile of gears. And I said, "Damn
it looks like if I don't have a bad future I don't have any future at all!" I said, "Am I
going to die sooner from doing all this?" And it said, "Your number of breaths are already counted.
I will worry about your last one." And then it said... When I said, "I don't know when or where
these futures occur." And it said, "That's not important." It said, "But for those
who make poor use of their choices offering fewer possibilities could be called mercy."
And so eventually I just got so tired of seeing these gears spin around and around and around
again. And basically I was seeing all these futures in my life that could be. That's a
lot of information to bring back! And I was even told at one point, "Knowing what or when it's not
important, having faith in the grand design is." And so I said, "Okay..." But at some point I said,
"Okay I think I can live with this now." You know, because I think, I think everything looks
good. And it gave me a few parting words. One was, "All the force of will you'll ever need is found
in the art of letting go." "Always live life in celebration of the individual spirit, for no one
and no thing can stand before the brilliance of a truly naked soul." Pay more attention to your
relationships and be gentle with everyone as I'm gentle with you. And I said, "What's gentle about
all this?" You know thinking about the pain. It said, "Your being here is in response to a prayer
you made one day in the midnight of your soul. And now the man who fell from the sky is not the
same who flew into it." Wow! And it sent me back. At one point the uh in between said, you know,
"The in between isn't a place you go to or come from, it's a place you are." Which is kind of
interesting. Because I mean, if anybody knows the Bible Luke 12:21 says, "Many are those who
will say here is the kingdom of God, or there is the kingdom of God the kingdom of God is neither
here nor there, it's within you." And because of that I've started to wonder if the fact that
or what looks like a fact that maybe 10 percent of the world has had a near-death experience,
which is a hell of a lot of people. Yeah it's like 700 million people. It's made me wonder if that's
what the second coming is all about. Which would be no more or less paradigm busting than the first
coming. It would just be different. But it would be true to that statement that it's within you.
And the lesson there is that if it can be in me it can be in you. It can be with anybody and not
everybody needs a two by four upside the head with a near-death experience to get there. Some people
can get through just meditating, you know? Some people... Because we're inclined to be that way.
Did you ever figure out what the prayer was that got you there? It would have probably could have
been just something as simple as being disgusted with the world and saying, "Give me a sign. Okay.
It didn't have to be anything profound. It just had to be honest, sincere and meaningful. And that
it might have been one of those. And that could have been when I was five years old. You know?
I don't have any idea of when, but it planted a seed and then one day that seed took fruit.
And then... Do you have any idea why it was post-apocalyptic? Like do you think
it's always like that way, or was just like a projection of part of your mind? Yeah. I think
it was created just for me in that moment. And then I think when I was gone it was gone. It's
hard to say why. People have said, "Well because you know, you, you designed satellite systems
and because you're an I.T. and because you built airplanes, that's why it had sort of a mechanical,
almost like a steampunk look with the gears. And who knows! Who cares! You know that same scene,
if you think about it, could have played out as a beautiful garden with weeds and the weeds
needed to be pulled because those were the bad, bad gears. Right? So who really cares. Well the
reason I asked... What, if you know why it was post-apocalyptic or different for you is because
I've just seen a lot of people, like in the comments of near-death experiences get really
hung up on why they're different. And I just think it's important, I think it's interesting...
Um well someone once said, like, "God will approach you in whatever way he
can get through to you. And like, and so God is infinite so near-death experiences are going to
be infinite in their scope." So... That's a good way of putting it. I think also in terms of that,
um... It's interesting because like you say, when you listen to a lot of near-death
experiences they do sound different you know? Um some maybe even hellish right? "A person...
But what's really weird is once you've had a near-death experience...
It's amazing how people who haven't had an NDE will say they sound different and
people who have had a near-death experience will say here's how they sound the same. Our,
our milestones in our listening are different. And we know what we're listening for. And
there's a subtle authenticity too that you get better at picking up on. And it has a lot to do
with what people are focusing on in their stories. But there's also just a vibration there. And
I've marveled at how stories can on the outside sound different, but I'm hearing that it's the
same experience. It's just you know, individually described this way. But uh if you ever were to go
to an International Association near-death studies national conference it's amazing how when people
come out of a conference room, and they look at you there's almost a hint of recognition in their
eyes. And how many... I'd say every spare two seats or three seats or sofa in the lobby of this
convention center were taken up by people sitting there sharing with strangers intimate details of
their lives because they have this connection. Each able to finish each other's sentences.
It's... I've never experienced anything like that! I'm not airy fairy! I said, I was in wars for 24
years. I was a war correspondent for NBC News. I, I really tell it like it is. So that's how it is!
I appreciate that! And then, so what's the best way for people to contact you, or do you want
people to contact you? I know you have a website. You have a YouTube channel. You have all kinds of
things. Sure, sure, sure. Well I am moving to Mexico, but I'm available even down there. You
know we have great cell service and all that. Um my website again is, inbetweenproductions.com all
one word inbetweenproductions.com. My narrative is there. A few podcast links are there. Um,
and then my contact information is there. So you can reach out to me there. Uh, and then you can
ping me with an email and always I will respond. You know if anybody wants to talk I can usually
find time to chat with people. I have two books out. They're on Amazon. One is called, "The In
Between A Trip of a Lifetime." And the other is, "The Practice In Between. The Art of Letting Go."
Now that one I'm very happy with. It's short. The art and... I do the audio. I do the audio for both
books on Audible. The first book is like a little over five hours. That second book is a little over
um... three hours. It's not very long, but I really like the way it all came together. And
I actually don't even remember writing that second book. It's as if it were just... Yeah... What does
the soup know of the spoon it's ladling? Sweet, sour, hot, cold, good, bad? It doesn't. It just
ladles soup, because that's its job. That's sort of how I feel uh... I'm, I'm acting sometimes.
Hey thank you for watching! Uh if you want to know what video to watch next I would suggest this one.
This seems like a really good video for you to watch right now. Yeah, that seems like a good one.
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