“Not your time.”

From: The Crossover Experience: Life After Death - DJ Kadagian, Gregory Shushan PhD, Dr. Pim van Lomell

25% Encounter a Border

In the majority of near-death experiences, NDErs are told they must return, or simply find themselves being sent back. Fewer are given a choice to stay. When this occurs, they are generally near a defined border such as a bridge, door, gate, or archway. They are told that if they cross, they cannot return.

 What is not clear is what they are crossing into that will not allow them to return. Is it a different location within this realm? A different realm altogether? A different state of awareness? A different dimension? We do not know, and it does not appear that NDErs inquire. All they know is they cannot return if they cross over. There is no in-between.

NDErs are often told by beings like themselves that it is not their time and that they must return in a halting, abrupt tone rather than a warmer, more comforting way. This is in contrast to a spiritual being, Jesus, God, or a god-like figure, who shares the same message in a loving and compassionate way instead.

The actual return is described fairly consistently. It generally begins abruptly. They describe being pulled, jerked, or tugged from behind. They do not initiate the return or show control over any part of it. It is much faster than their entry into this realm and often frightening. There are no stops along the way. 

Reentry into their body is most often described as abrupt and uncomfortable. They may feel a sense of crashing back into their bodies or being squeezed at high pressure. Depending on the circumstances of their clinical death, they may begin to feel great pain, confusion, and extreme disappointment, sadness, or anger.

A reluctance to return is one of the most common NDE elements across cultures. 

Another common description is horror and disgust at the prospect of returning to the body. There are examples from North America, Polynesia, and Melanesia. The bodiless afterlife state is clearly far preferable to the earthly embodied one. There are often graphic or emotional descriptions about how horrified and afraid they are to re-enter their bodies.

Rather than being sent back because it is not their time, or to fulfill some earthly obligation (raising a child, caring for a sick loved one, etc.), sometimes it's a case of mistaken identity. Such accounts are known from ancient Greece and Rome, China, India, Medieval Europe, modern Guam, and Thailand. 

The return to the body is usually quite abrupt. Sometimes people feel a great force sucking them back through the tunnel. Some people describe how they were pushed back into their body via the head after seeing a nurse or doctor place the resuscitation equipment on their body. The conscious return to the body is an extremely unpleasant experience for most people.

Back in their sick, damaged, and aching bodies, NDErs are upset at having been denied something so beautiful. Some patients react with indignation, disappointment, or rebellion as soon as they regain consciousness.

When NDErs have the conscious return, they have a problem because they are too extended in their consciousness to fit into this small body, which still has the problem with the disease as well. When you have a heart attack, you return to the pain. Where you have a traffic accident, or where you have a cerebral hemorrhage, there are so many limitations in your body, a stark contrast to just a few minutes ago when you were without any limitations at all.⁠