Jim Bruton: A Pilot in the "In-Between" and the Gears of the Future

Medical Details

On October 6, 2016, on the second test flight of a 1933 French "Flying Flea" reproduction he had built, Jim lost his engine and crashed into trees near a lake at a Boy Scout camp at around 70 miles an hour. He broke all his ribs, ruptured both lungs, suffered multiple fractures of his right leg and a wound in his lower back from the engine battery. He was flown to a trauma center in Hartford, Connecticut, intubated, and placed in a medically induced coma for one week while facing a series of operations, some with only a 2 percent chance of success.

The Experience

Jim Bruton has always loved invention and the early days of flight; he built his own hang glider in high school and later a World War I reproduction aircraft. In October 2016, on the second test flight of a whimsical 1933 French design he had built, his engine failed. He aimed for a small lake, overshot, and crashed through the trees. A retired police officer fishing nearby called for help and held him up so he could breathe. At the trauma center, doctors placed him in a coma for a week.

His experience, he says, was not the typical one. There was no tunnel or landscape of light. He found himself on the terrace of a tall building in a gray, ruined city that stretched to the horizon, completely silent, under heavy, storm-dark clouds. Doubled over with nausea, he whispered, "I don't think I can stand this."

To his left stood a large egg-shaped sculpture of metal latticework. Inside, gears drifted in space, some solid and some ghostlike, passing through one another. A voice within his consciousness, which stayed with him throughout, told him, "This is the future birthing into the now," and "This is the process of becoming." Looking at the gears, he saw images like video of future moments: himself older, his children with their own children.

When he reached in and one gear brushed his hand, the nausea returned, and reflexively he pulled it out. All the gears spun and recalibrated. The voice explained that each gear was the probability of a thought, word or action in his future, and that his destiny was resetting around what he had removed. Some futures caused pain because, the voice said, all choices have unintended consequences, and the pain was his guide. One gear showed future grandchildren laughing on a Ferris wheel, and he let it pass.

He asked whether he would die from doing this. The voice told him his number of breaths was already counted, and that better than knowing tomorrow is understanding how beautifully everything fits together. It spoke of grace, which it called his birthright, and told him, "Pay more attention to your relationships. Be gentle with everyone, as I am gentle with you." It told him he had prayed for something, and being there was the answer. Finally, placing his hand on the egg, he said, "I think I can live with this now," and woke in the hospital.

Lying there afterward, he says, the voice asked whether he wanted to carry alcohol into his future or leave it behind. He chose to leave it, and says he has not had a drink since.

How It Changed Their Life

He says he lost all desire for alcohol and has not had a drink since. He distills the experience into truths about letting go, living authentically, thinking beyond black and white, and living in a spirit of service. He attended his first near-death experience conference in 2019.