Page 47 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

in, and one had to be a very good swimmer to manage holding out at the surface,
taking into account that the place under the tree was very deep.

But to tell children about danger is almost always useless. The more caring
adults convince them that an irremediable misfortune can happen, the more they are
sure that "it can happen to someone else but surely not to them, not here, not now".
On the contrary, the feeling of danger attracts them even more, provoking them to
sometimes doing stupid things.
So, we – four "dashing" neighbourhood guys and I – thought the same way and
on being unable to endure the heat any longer, decided to bathe. The river looked still
and seemingly represented no danger whatsoever. We agreed to watch each other and
started to swim. In the beginning everything was quite familiar – the flow was no
stronger than near our old beach and the depth was the same as we had been used to.
I plucked up courage and started to swim more confidently. The requital for such
confidence did not wait too long. I had not swum far from the bank, but suddenly I
felt that I was being sharply pulled down. It happened so swiftly that I did not have
time to react and hold out to stay at the surface. I was twirled around and very quickly
went down. It seemed that time had stopped and I desperately felt the lack of air.

Back then I knew nothing either about clinical death or luminous tunnels which
appeared during the process of dying. But what happened next looked very like all
those stories about clinical death that I found in different books, when living in far
away America...
I felt that if I failed to breathe any air right now, my lungs would explode and I
would certainly die. I got terribly scared and everything went dark before my eyes.
Suddenly a bright flash blazed in my head and all feelings disappeared... A blindingly
bright transparent blue tunnel, as if woven from moving tiny silvery stars, appeared.
I placidly soared inside it, feeling neither suffocation nor pain; I was just surprised in
my mind by an unusual sense of absolute happiness, as if at last I had found the place
of my long-awaited dream. I felt the incredible peace and quiet. All sounds
disappeared. I did not feel like moving. The body became very light, almost
weightless. Most likely I was simply dying in that moment…
I saw very beautiful, luminous and transparent human figures slowly and
smoothly coming to me along the tunnel. They all warmly smiled, as if inviting me to
join them. I had already begun to reach out for them, as suddenly an enormous
luminous palm appeared from somewhere, caught me from below and began to lift

me to the surface rapidly and effortlessly, like a grain of sand. My brain exploded
with the sharp sounds which gushed into me, as if a protective partition suddenly
broke in my head... I was thrown to the surface like a ball and stunned by the waterfall
of colours, sounds and feelings which for some reason I perceived deeper than
before…
Everybody on the shore was in a frenzy of panic. The neighbourhood guys were
yelling and vigorously gesticulating, pointing in my direction. Someone tried to drag
me out onto dry land and then everything started to drift and spin in a crazy whirlpool,
and my poor overstrained consciousness glided into complete silence... When I came
to myself a bit, the children stood around me with their eyes wide with horror. They

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