And you thought Hunter Biden’s drug benders had taken him on some out-of-body experiences!
The newest member of Joe Biden’s extended family believes she went to heaven in 1999 when she “drowned” while kayaking — and said God’s pearly gates were so stunning she “did not want to return to earth.”
President Joe Biden’s granddaughter — Hunter’s daughter — Naomi Biden is set to get married Saturday at the White House to Peter Neal, whose mom Dr. Mary C. Neal is the author of “To Heaven and Back: A Doctor’s Extraordinary Account of her Death, Heaven, Angels and Life Again.”
The No. 1 best-seller published in 2011 tells the story of Neal “dying” and coming back to life when she kayaked down a waterfall in Chile’s Fuy River.
Neal writes about getting “pinned in the waterfall” and trying to escape, but the water was too powerful.
“When I no longer felt myself trying to breathe, I assumed I would die,” she wrote in a chapter titled “Death on the River.”
The mom said dying felt “curiously blissful.” As the other people on the expedition rushed to find her and save her, Neal said she went to heaven.
“It felt as if I had finally shaken off my heavy outer layer, freeing my soul. I rose up and out of the river, and when my soul broke through the surface of the water, I encountered a group of fifteen to twenty souls (human spirits sent by God), who greeted me with the most overwhelming joy I have ever experienced and could ever imagine.”
Neal said she was led to a “great and brilliant hall” where she was so stunned by the beauty that she didn’t want to go back to Earth.
“Don’t get me wrong…I have been very blessed in my life and have experienced great joy and love here on earth. I love my husband and I love each of my children with great intensity, and that love is reciprocated. It’s just that God’s world is exponentially more colorful and intense,” she said.
“I experienced heaven first-hand after my kayaking accident. The heaven I witnessed was so pure, love-filled and magnificent that I did not want to return to earth.”
Meanwhile, as people back on the Chilean river tried to save her life down on earth, Neal said she got annoyed.
The rescuers “begged me to come back and take a breath, I felt compelled to return to my body and take another breath before returning to my journey,” she wrote. “This became tiresome, and I grew quite irritated with their repeated calling.
“I knew they didn’t understand what was happening, but I was annoyed that they wouldn’t let me go,” she said of her desire to die.
Neal, a devout Christian, is a UCLA-trained orthopedic surgeon who lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the time of the incident. She said despite her medical training, she is certain she was dead and came back to life thanks to God.
“I believe Jesus was holding me, comforting me, and reassuring me when I was drowning,” she said — but ultimately it was not her time to go to heaven.
After being resuscitated, Neal said she was badly injured and had to get to the road. That’s when “several young Chilean men materialized out of nowhere,” who she later realized were “angels by the river.”
“These young men were nowhere to be found” after her accident, she writes, “and the people from the village had no idea who they could be.”
Neal returned to Wyoming following the incident, and doctors at the hospital there told her husband she would likely die. However, her community prayed for her and she persevered.
Neal went on to write her memoir, and a second book titled “7 Lessons from Heaven: How Dying Taught Me How to Live a Joy-Filled Life.” She was also featured on the Netflix show “Surviving Death.”
She gave a Ted Talk on going to heaven and coming back, but it was later flagged by the organization which claimed it “appears to fall outside TEDx’s curatorial guidelines.”
“This talk only represents the speaker’s personal experiences. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers,” the group clarified.
Neal is sure to be at the wedding Saturday on the White House’s south lawn.
Naomi Biden, 28, is the daughter of Hunter Biden and Kathleen Buhle. Her parents divorced in 2017. She is named for the president’s first-born daughter, who tragically died along with Biden’s first wife Neila in a 1972 car crash.
She and her husband-to-be are both lawyers and live in the White House.