Shown Two Futures: Bill’s Near-Death Experience

In 1994, trade show vendor Bill Tortorella fell violently ill and slipped into a near-death experience that unfolded like a guided tour of love, judgment, warning, and promise.

A Flu That Closed His Throat

Bill was in Tucson for a marathon, 14-day trade show when a fast-moving virus swept the venue. By day four his fever spiked, his throat tightened, and his oxygen dropped. After a clinic placed him on oxygen and medication, he returned to his hotel room with a warning to go to the hospital if he worsened. That night, he says, the room changed into “a night of light and love.”

Crossing Over: Mist, Tunnel, and “You’re Home”

He describes watching himself leave his body through his eyes, rising as a glowing mist and hovering above the bed. The fear of death dissolved into a widening warmth that felt like love. Then a gateway opened, drawing him into a tunnel he says was saturated with magnified color, like drifting through Orion and bright nebulae. The love expanded until he felt he was made of it.

Bill Tortorella
“I kept saying, ‘I’m home.’ Then a soft voice answered, ‘Yes, Bill, you’re home.’ I didn’t realize she had been with me the whole way.”

A welcoming presence introduced herself as Antonia, a guardian who “takes you in and brings you home.” Family gathered in awareness. Bill recognized a second guardian by voice alone. “Hello, Billy,” said Peter, his brother who died when Bill was a teenager. Communication, he says, was telepathic, effortless, and saturated with understanding.

Encounters and Messages: Life Review in Living Color

With Peter at his side, Bill entered an illuminated space where a life review began. First came the good: kindnesses to friends, small acts that mattered more than he realized. Then came the harm. He recounts not just seeing hurt he had caused, but becoming the emotional and physical pain of those he had wounded. At one point he cried out that he could not bear it. A voice answered: “The good outweighs the bad.” The gray lifted. He was again a beam of beautiful light.

A third guardian, Oren, appeared, and the scene widened.

The Hall of Events: Past, Present, and Futures

They took him, he says, to a vast Hall of Events, like a living auditorium. Scenes flickered past: wars before his lifetime, then contemporary moments. He describes seeing the events that would become September 11, feeling panic as he recognized friends in the towers. He tried to intervene, but his guides told him he could not. The scenes leapt forward again into Baghdad and then farther still, into the collective choices humanity might face.

What he was shown next came as a pair of diverging outcomes:

• A world degraded into ruin. Burned cities. Neighbors estranged.
• A world renewed by compassion and listening. People meeting, speaking, and choosing for the good of children and the vulnerable.

The lesson he carried back was blunt. Negative and positive energies are in constant tension. Our choices tilt the balance. He says he was told that service is critical, not only money but daily acts that build connection. Even a smile, he was taught, is “a gesture of love.”

Numbers, Knowledge, and the Nine Principles

In a final teaching segment, angels surrounded him. They conveyed nine principles of enlightenment focused on choice, intuition, lessons, warnings, and above all service. He saw streams of living numbers flowing like crystal water. Among them, the numbers 66 stood out as a personal signal he had noticed throughout life. He was told to pay attention. For him, it was an alert from his guardians, a nudge when something was off or deeply important.

Then a gentle, luminous presence approached with a directive. He had to return. Bill pleaded to stay. The presence identified herself as “six of six” and called him Dad, a puzzling detail because he had two sons at the time and no daughter. He was pulled back through a rough vortex and slammed into awareness on the hotel bed, lungs burning as the first breath tore in. Sensation returned slowly. He called for help and was taken to the hospital. Years later, he says, a daughter was born on June 6, 2000. The date became a personal seal on the message of six.

Return and Aftermath: The Ordinary World, Charged

Back in his body, he recovered with oxygen and medications. The aftermath was not fireworks. It was a changed posture toward life: pay attention, serve where you can, and steer toward the future that grows from love rather than fear. The nine principles became a quiet rule set he tried to live. The number signal remained a reminder to look again before acting.

Reflections

Bill’s account is textured by clear specifics. Names of guides. Sensations of mist and color. The shock of seeing suffering through another person’s nervous system. The sobering two-path future. It reads like a curriculum more than a spectacle. Whether one takes his narrative as literal travel or as an interior revelation, the ethical center is unmistakable: what we do to one another matters in a way that echoes beyond our own skin.

Key Takeaways

• Service, even small daily acts, strengthens the world we actually want to live in.
• Life review felt like full empathy, not just memory, and the good can outweigh the bad when we grow from it.
• The future branches through our choices. Listening and protecting children mark the right path.

Curious about my writing process? Learn how I made this post.

Listen to Bill Tortorella's Full Experience