Actor Michael Douglas recently revealed that he once heard angels sing and saw a mysterious white light during a near-death experience; it happened when he nearly drowned back in the 1960s while swimming in the ocean.
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Douglas, 73, told USA Today that the scary situation unfolded when he was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But despite claiming to hear angels sing, Douglas said he isn’t a “believer in the afterlife.”
“I did hear angels singing, saw a white light and then relaxation came over me as I faced death,” he told the outlet, going on to explain what he believes happens when people report these experiences. “I do think we have a mechanism in our brain that takes over and makes it easier to accept the inevitable during the process of dying.”
The actor, who produced the new remake “Flatliners,” a film about the afterlife, overcame cancer in 2010. Despite saying he doesn’t believe in the afterlife, he has, in the past, expressed appreciation for those who prayed for his recovery.
“For somebody who has no formal religious education — my father’s Jewish, my mother’s the Church of England — the amount of prayers and support that I received worldwide, I think, truly did have an influence and help in what happened,” he told Oprah back in 2011. “I was overwhelmed by the love.”
In a 2015 interview, Douglas told the “Today” show about how his son, Dylan, had come to embrace Judaism and, as a result, had brought quite a bit of spirituality into the family home. He also shared some of his own religious background.
“The irony is my father is Jewish, my mother is Protestant,” he said. “I married Catherine (Zeta-Jones) who is Catholic.”