Beverly Brodsky had given up on God twelve years earlier. She wanted nothing to do with faith, prayer, or divine intervention. Yet there she was, broken and alone, calling out to a being she firmly believed did not exist.
Doctors had sent her home from UCLA Hospital without pain medication. Her skull was fractured. Surgeons had worked to reconstruct the right side of her face after a motorcycle accident tore it away. Salt-soaked bandages covered wounds that medical staff said they normally only encountered on battlefields.
Desperation pushed words from her lips that her rational mind rejected. What happened next would challenge everything she thought she knew about life, death, and the nature of God. Beverly claims she encountered the divine that night, and what she witnessed bore no resemblance to anything she had read in religious texts or imagined during her childhood.
From Philadelphia to Atheism
Beverly grew up in a conservative Jewish household in Philadelphia during the 1950s. Her family observed traditions, attended synagogue, and raised her with faith woven into daily life. For eight years, she accepted this worldview without question. Everything changed when she learned about the Holocaust.
At just eight years old, Beverly discovered the horrors that had befallen Jewish people across Europe. Six million dead. Families destroyed. Children murdered. Her young mind could not reconcile such suffering with the existence of a loving, all-powerful God.
How could any divine being permit such atrocities? Where was God when innocent people faced extermination simply for their heritage? Beverly found no satisfying answers from the adults around her.
By 1958, she had made her decision. God did not exist. Any deity who would allow such horror did not deserve her belief. Beverly embraced atheism and carried that conviction into adulthood.
For the next twelve years, she lived without faith. Questions about meaning, purpose, and the afterlife held no interest for her. Religion represented a comforting illusion for those too weak to face reality. Beverly considered herself clear-eyed and rational.
A Crash on Sunset Boulevard
July 1970 found Beverly living in Los Angeles, far from her Philadelphia roots. She was twenty years old, navigating young adulthood in a city defined by possibility and reinvention. A motorcycle ride near Sunset Boulevard ended that chapter of her life.
Details of the crash itself remain unclear, but its aftermath left no room for ambiguity. Beverly suffered a fractured skull. Impact forces had ripped away the right side of her face. Emergency responders rushed her to UCLA Hospital, where she would spend two weeks receiving intensive care.
Medical staff expressed shock at the severity of her injuries. Doctors told Beverly they typically saw such trauma only on battlefields, where explosions and combat produced devastating wounds. Her face required extensive reconstruction. Salt-soaked bandages wrapped around damaged tissue to promote healing.
When the hospital finally discharged her, Beverly received no pain medication to take home. She returned to her residence carrying injuries that rivaled wartime casualties, expected to heal through sheer endurance.
Agony overwhelmed her. Physical pain merged with emotional despair until Beverly could no longer distinguish between them. She felt utterly hopeless, abandoned by a medical system that had patched her body but offered no relief for her suffering.
A Desperate Plea and Its Immediate Answer
Alone with her pain, Beverly did something that contradicted everything she believed. “God, if you’re out there, you can have me now because I’m finished,” she said. Instantly, all her agony vanished.
Beverly found herself floating near the ceiling, looking down at her own unconscious body on the bed below. She was still herself, still possessed of her thoughts and awareness, but no longer contained within physical form. Before she could process this impossible situation, she noticed she was not alone.
A Radiant Companion Without Wings
A being appeared beside her, bathed in shimmering white light. Beverly perceived him as masculine, though he radiated an inner glow unlike anything she had witnessed in ordinary life. He had no wings, yet he flew just as she did.
Any doubt or panicked questions that might have arisen simply evaporated in his presence. Beverly felt reverent awe wash over her. She sensed immediately that this was no ordinary spirit or angel.
Beverly later shared her experience with author Kenneth Ring, describing the encounter. “Such love and gentleness emanated from his being that I felt that I was in the presence of the Messiah.”
Gently, the being took her hand. Together, they flew straight through the window. Beverly felt no surprise at her ability to pass through solid matter. In his presence, everything seemed exactly as it should be.
Serenity and joy replaced the desperation that had consumed her moments earlier. She recognized her companion, though she could not explain how or why. Whatever journey lay ahead, she trusted him completely.
Through Darkness Toward Brilliant Light
Below them stretched the Pacific Ocean, beautiful and vast. But Beverly’s attention turned upward, where a large opening led to a circular path.
A white light shone from the far end of the passageway, pouring out into the darkness. Even from outside, Beverly could see its brilliance, though she did not yet realize how much of its glory remained veiled from this distance.
Hand in hand with her angelic guide, Beverly entered the small, dark passageway. She traveled upward for what seemed like a great distance, moving toward the light. Time itself seemed absent from this place.
When she finally emerged at her destination, Beverly realized her companion had departed. She stood alone before the source of the light. But she was far from lonely.
God Looked Nothing Like She Expected
Before Beverly stood something she could only describe as a living presence of light. Within it, she sensed intelligence, wisdom, compassion, love, and truth all woven together into a single being. What struck her most was what this presence lacked. God had no form. No physical shape. No gender.
Beverly had grown up with Biblical descriptions of God. Even as an atheist, she retained cultural images of a divine father figure, a bearded patriarch ruling from above. What she encountered defied every such expectation.
She later described this in terms of pure light. Just as white light contains all colors of a rainbow when passing through a prism, this presence contained everything. Male and female. Justice and mercy. Knowledge and love.
Deep within herself, recognition dawned. Beverly understood with absolute certainty what she faced. She was standing before God.
Questions Poured Out Without Words
Beverly had spent twelve years rejecting this being. She had accumulated questions, grievances, and accusations throughout her atheist years. Now, face to face with the divine, everything came rushing out.
She challenged God with every question she had ever wondered about. Every injustice she had witnessed in the physical world. Every atrocity that had driven her toward atheism in the first place.
What about the Holocaust? What about innocent suffering? What about children who die before they have a chance to live? Beverly discovered something remarkable about divine communication. God knew all her thoughts immediately and responded telepathically. No words were necessary. Her mind lay completely exposed, naked before universal intelligence.
Her ethereal body seemed to dissolve. She became pure mind, pure consciousness, facing what she would later call the Universal Mind. Light surrounded her, but it was more felt than seen. No physical eye could absorb its splendor.
All Knowledge Unfolded at Once
God did not simply answer Beverly’s questions. Something far more profound occurred. “I was given more than just the answers to my questions; all knowledge unfolded to me, like the instant blossoming of an infinite number of flowers all at once.” Beverley added.
Every mystery that had troubled her found resolution. Every doubt dissolved. Beverly understood things she had never even thought to ask about. And with each revelation, her own mind responded with recognition rather than surprise. Of course. She already knew this. How could she ever have forgotten?
A journey through the universe followed. Beverly traveled to the center of stars being born. She witnessed supernovas exploding. Celestial events beyond human naming passed before her awareness.
Space and time revealed themselves as illusions binding consciousness to the physical realm. Out there, everything existed simultaneously. Past, present, and future merged into eternal now.
Beverly rode as a passenger while the Creator showed her the fullness of creation. Beauty beyond description surrounded her at every turn.
Returning to a Broken Body
Eventually, Beverly found herself back in physical form. Her injured body awaited her, still bearing the damage from that motorcycle crash near Sunset Boulevard.
But something miraculous had occurred. Pain had vanished completely. Beverly remained filled with ecstasy beyond anything she had imagined possible. For two months after her experience, this state persisted. Joy suffused every moment.
She felt remade. Meanings appeared everywhere she looked. Everything seemed alive, filled with energy and intelligence that she had never noticed before.
Her atheism could not survive what she had witnessed. Beverly eventually became a church member and dedicated herself to sharing her experience with others.
Why Her Account Still Moves Researchers
Kenneth Ring, a respected researcher who has studied near-death experiences extensively, collected Beverly’s testimony for his book with Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino titled Lessons From The Light. Ring offered a striking assessment of her account, calling it “possibly the most moving in my entire collection.”
Beverly’s story reached wide audiences over the following decades. McCall’s magazine profiled her experience. A BBC documentary called The Human Body featured her account. She gave the first near-death experience interview on Israeli public radio.
Recognition followed. Beverly earned inclusion in the 2006 edition of Who’s Who in America. She spent fifteen years running groups in Philadelphia and San Diego connected to the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Now she works as a coordinator for San Diego IANDS, helping others understand what she encountered during those moments between life and death. Her fascination with connections between deathbed visions, near-death experiences, and mystical states continues to drive her research and outreach.
More than fifty years have passed since that motorcycle accident on Sunset Boulevard. Beverly has never forgotten what she witnessed. Nor has she, despite facing ridicule and disbelief over the decades, ever doubted its reality.
She considers everything since that night to be a passing fantasy. A brief dream that will end when she awakens again in the permanent presence of what she found beyond the light.
