Dean Braxton: Clinically Dead for 105 Minutes in Heaven

The Supervisor Who Said He'd Work Until He Died

Dean Braxton he recalls, "and then I died."

May 5, 2006 started like any other kidney stone episode. Braxton had dealt with them before. He knew the drill: emergency room, morphine, pain relief, go home. "I remember going into the emergency room and just kind of like nonchalant say hey I got a kidney stone, it's over here," he says. He thought he could wait it out.

But this time was different. The stone was stuck on his right side, and he also had a kidney infection. The hospital kept him overnight, gave him antibiotics, and scheduled surgery for the next morning. The operation went smoothly. They broke up the stones. What they didn't know was that Braxton was one of those rare patients for whom the prescribed antibiotics don't work.

"When they broke up the stones, the poison went into my bloodstream and I became what you call septic," Braxton explains. His organs began shutting down. Not just his heart and lungs. Everything. According to the medical records, he was clinically dead for about an hour and 45 minutes.

The Absence of Fear

What surprised Braxton most wasn't the dying itself. It was how little fear he felt. "I knew I was dying. I was surprised how much fear I didn't have," he says. As a born-again Christian, he believed in heaven, but belief is one thing. Facing your own death is another.

"I said to myself I'm dying and all I could say after that was I'm going home," Braxton remembers. Then he left his body.

He shot through the hospital floors. Up through the blue sky. Into outer space. "It was really fast. I used to always try to figure out how fast it was," he says. He remembered a Bible verse: to be absent from the body is to be in the presence of the Lord. "By the time the top eyelid hits the bottom one, I was already in heaven. That's how fast it was," he explains.

The Window Into Peace

As he moved through what felt like a dark tunnel, Braxton saw light ahead. But it wasn't just a light at the end of a tunnel. "It looked like a window. I'm not saying it was a window, but that's the best way description I could say," he clarifies.

When he came through that window, everything changed.

"Everything was right. There was nothing wrong. It was peace," Braxton says. There was nothing that would agitate you, nothing that would get on your nerves. But what struck him most was something he hadn't expected: "I didn't know how out of place I felt before until I went through this experience, because I went in and I fit. I knew I was welcome there," he recalls.

Everything in heaven welcomed him. Not just God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Everything. "I felt welcome from the trees. I looked at flowers, they seemed to welcome me. Everything there was so glad I had showed up," Braxton says.

The Forest and the King

Braxton found himself standing before a forest. He knew Jesus was on the other side of those trees. "I didn't even know this desire was on the inside of me until really I got there, and that was I really just didn't want to be in heaven. I wanted to see Jesus Christ. I wanted to see him face to face," he explains.

He understood something profound in that moment: "Heaven's not heaven without the Father and Jesus. They make up heaven. It's not a place you want to be, it's a person you want to be with," Braxton says.

As he walked through the forest, the trees parted before him. "I felt like they were saying on both sides of me, 'He's going to see the king, he's going to see the king, he's going to see the king,'" Braxton recalls. He came out into a wide clearing. Jesus stood to the left, facing a multitude of angels and redeemed people. Millions of them. Billions.

Braxton didn't walk up to Jesus standing tall. He got close, then dropped to his hands and knees. He looked at Jesus's feet. "I kind of raised my head up enough to see part of his legs, never really his face at that moment, and all I could say was, 'You did this for me,'" he says.

Everything in his being knew: the only reason he was in heaven was because of what Jesus Christ had done.

"The next thing I could only do was say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," Braxton remembers. He stopped. "I said the only reason I'm here is because of what he had done. Mentally I knew he had done it for everyone, but personally I took it on as so personal that you not only died on the cross so that I could be here, but you created all of heaven just for me," he says.

He wasn't being selfish. That's just what it felt like.

Every Part of Him Loved Me

Braxton began looking up Jesus's body. "I looked up from his feet to his ankles. His ankles loved me. I saw his calves, they loved me. I saw his knees, they loved me. Everything about him I looked at loved me. His hands, they loved me," he says.

Then he got to Jesus's face.

"He looked at me like I never ever disobeyed him in my entire existence," Braxton recalls. That moment still moves him. He thought about it later and realized: when Jesus forgives you, he forgets it. The Bible says it in Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10. "I experienced that look from Jesus," Braxton says.

He knew something else in that moment: "I was the eternal being that I would never die. My body died, but me, the real person on the inside of this body, will never die," he explains. The love Jesus had for him would outlast him. Actually, it can't outlast him, because he'll live forever.

After Jesus downloaded some things into him (that's how Braxton describes it, like a computer), Jesus looked at him and said: "No, it's not your time. Go back,".

Braxton was okay with it. He didn't go back through the forest. He flew over it. "You can literally say I want to be 10 feet above the surface there," he explains. It's like when Jesus walked on water, but there's no fear, so you can go as high as you want.

The Body Wasn't Ready

He got to the place where he would leave heaven. It wasn't a door. "I knew the next step I took I would be out of that realm," Braxton says. He stood there for a while.

Then he sensed something: his body wasn't ready. "I was so joyful that it wasn't ready," he recalls.

He turned around and went back. The forest was before him. Jesus was on the other side. But this time, Braxton went to the left of the forest. "All of creation is so joyful. I saw mountains and they were beautiful mountains. They looked like ocean waves moving because they could move," he says. The mountains passed him like ocean waves, and he thought: this is so wonderful.

He believed he was going to stay.

He came back to Jesus, this time from the other side. He went behind Jesus, then came back to the same position as before. He bowed down again. Jesus spoke to him, talked about things there. "There was this great light that was coming off of him and it was wrapping itself around me," Braxton remembers.

Then Jesus looked down at him again with those beautiful, loving eyes. "He says to me again, 'No, it's not your time. Go back,'" Braxton recalls.

The second time, Braxton went over the trees again. Got to the edge. Prepared to step out. And again: his body wasn't ready. "I'm thinking, 'Yes, I am staying,'" he says.

The Right Side of Heaven

This time, instead of going left, he went right. That side seemed to have more liquids: water, seas, rivers. "That blue, like we would say blue, because the colors there are more vibrant than you can imagine," Braxton explains. He traveled through, experienced things, saw many animals. There are a lot of animals in heaven, he notes.

He came back to Jesus. And this time, he saw something he hadn't focused on before: his family.

"I see my grandmother Mary standing out front. She's in a group over on this side over here and she's standing out front, and then behind her were other relatives, and then behind them were relatives. There was generation after generation of all those that had a connection with Jesus Christ and the Father, and they came to greet me in," Braxton says.

He knows now they were there the first two times. He just hadn't focused on them. He'd been focused on Jesus. But this time, he saw them clearly.

People ask what they looked like. "It's hard to describe people in heaven because there's no time. I tell people they were shiny, they had a big smile and pure joy," Braxton says. Then he thought: wow, I got to see my entire family in heaven smiling. "I thought, 'I've never seen that on the planet,'" he recalls.

They were all enjoying each other so much. He didn't know family could be like that. And he realized: family's important to God.

There were people there he didn't think would be there. "I thought they didn't go to heaven because they didn't meet the criteria I had for them. They met God's criteria, but they didn't meet my criteria," Braxton admits. God's criteria: accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Jesus downloaded more things into him. Braxton got to experience all of heaven coming together, praising and worshiping God.

The Command

Then Jesus looked at him again. This time was different. "He says with a command, strong command: 'No, it's not your time. Go back,'" Braxton recalls.

He felt like all of creation in front of him moved out of the way and said: he's not talking about me, he's talking about you. "I felt like a soldier. I used to be in the Air Force. I felt like a soldier. I felt like I went, 'Yes sir,'" Braxton says.

He felt like Jesus was saying: I need you there more than I need you here.

His grandmother Mary looked at him as Jesus spoke. "She says, 'Bring as many of us back with you as you can,'" Braxton recalls. She meant his entire family here on planet Earth.

He bowed before Jesus, went over the trees again, got to the edge of heaven, took a step, and was out. Headed back to this realm.

"I was sad. I felt like a baby crying really hard," Braxton says.

The Return

He came into the hospital room, hovering over his bed. They had stopped working on him. They were putting things away. "The doctor even said he was signing the death certificate at that time," Braxton recalls.

He looked at his body down there. He hovered over it. Then, for some reason, "I turned over and went into my body like that," he says.

The heart monitor started beeping. The doctors rushed back. They intubated him, got him breathing again.

"I didn't really want to come back, but I felt like he was saying I need you there more than I need you here," Braxton says.

How He Changed

"I look at things from an eternal point of view. I don't have the same grasp as I did before on things," Braxton explains. He doesn't hold onto things the same way. It's not that he freely lets everything go, because we need things here on the planet. But if they go, he doesn't grieve them.

"My wife could probably tell you more of the changes because she saw the difference," he says.

Dean Braxton has shared his story widely since 2006, appearing in multiple interviews and podcasts to tell people what he saw. His grandmother's words stayed with him: bring as many of us back with you as you can.

What Braxton's Experience Shows Us

Most NDEs are brief. A glimpse through the door, then back. Braxton was clinically dead for 105 minutes and got sent back three times before he finally returned to his body. That gave him time to explore. He went left around the forest, then right. He saw mountains that moved like ocean waves. He met generations of family members he didn't know had made it to heaven. This wasn't a flash of light and a feeling. This was an extended stay in a place with geography, with different regions, with things to discover.

The detail that gets me is Jesus looking at him "like I never ever disobeyed him." Braxton knew his own life. He knew what he'd done wrong. But Jesus looked at him like none of it had ever happened. That's not metaphorical forgiveness. That's forgiveness so complete it erases the memory of the offense. When experiencers talk about unconditional love, this is what they mean. Not "I love you despite what you did." More like "What you did never existed in the first place."

The trees welcoming him, the flowers glad he showed up, this appears in account after account. If a tree can feel joy at your arrival, consciousness isn't limited to things with brains. Everything over there is alive and aware. I don't know what to do with that, honestly. It suggests something about the nature of reality that our current physics can't touch. Maybe consciousness is the ground state and matter is the exception, not the other way around.

Braxton says heaven isn't a place, it's a person. "It's not a place you want to be, it's a person you want to be with." That reframes everything. Heaven is wherever Jesus is. The beautiful landscapes, the rivers, the mountains that move, those are the setting. But the experience is the encounter. Without Jesus, Braxton says, heaven wouldn't be heaven. It would just be a really nice place.

The fact that his body "wasn't ready" twice before he finally came back tells you something about the relationship between consciousness and the physical form. Braxton was fully himself over there. Making choices, exploring, talking to Jesus, recognizing family members. His consciousness didn't need his body to function. But his body needed time to be revived before his consciousness could re-enter it. Consciousness doesn't wait for the body. The body waits for consciousness.

Braxton came back with a message from his grandmother: bring as many of us back with you as you can. That's the mission of every experiencer who returns. They've seen what's waiting. They know death isn't the end. And they spend the rest of their lives trying to help the rest of us understand: you're eternal, you're loved beyond measure, and everyone you've ever loved is waiting for you in a place more beautiful than words can capture.

That's not wishful thinking. That's the testimony of a man who was there for an hour and 45 minutes and came back to tell us what he saw.