But Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, along with colleagues from 17 institutions in the US and UK, wanted to do away with assumptions about what people did or did not experience on their deathbeds.
It is possible, they believe, to collect scientific data about those would-be final moments. Mr A, it turned out, was not the only patient who had some memory of his death. Instead, they reported dream-like or hallucinatory scenarios that Parnia and his co-authors categorised into seven major themes. Fear Seeing animals or plants Bright light Violence and persecution Deja-vu Seeing family Recalling events post-cardiac arrest.
These mental experiences ranged from terrifying to blissful. There were those who reported feeling afraid or suffering persecution, for example. Heightened senses, a distorted perception of the passage of time and a feeling of disconnection from the body were also common sensations that survivors reported.
Someone from India might return from the dead and say they saw Krishna, whereas someone from the Midwest of the US could experience the same thing but claim to have seen God. Besides a man with a white beard, which is just a picture. So far, the team has uncovered no predictor for who is most likely to remember something from their death, and explanations are lacking for why some people experience terrifying scenarios while others report euphoric ones.
One became aware of a woman up in one corner of the room beckoning to him, and the next moment he was up there, looking down at himself. Unfortunately, neither patient underwent resuscitation in areas where boards were positioned. The researchers got closer this time, but once more the opportunity to verify or refute out-of-body experience was missed. Some simple and elegant painted wooden boards illustrate this beautifully.
So, what does it feel like to die? As these studies record, death by cardiac arrest seems to feel either like nothing, or something pleasant and perhaps slightly mystical. The moments before death were not felt to be painful. I take comfort from the notion that death is not necessarily something to be feared. What does it feel like to die? People who have survived clinical death sometimes recount out-of-body experiences. But can these sensations be physically proved?
A patient receives CPR. Photograph: Alamy. And nothingness is so hard to imagine normally, but once you "experience" it, and they bring you back, part of you wishes you could have stayed. There's no positive feelings there, obviously, but it takes away everything bad, too.
All your stress, the nightmares, the troubles. All gone. Just nothing exists. It's beautiful in a way. I'm not suicidal at all, and hope to live the rest of a long and happy life. But I'm very much looking forward to a lack of consciousness when I do eventually pass again, and I can honestly say I don't fear death anymore.
She never wanted to leave that state. A middle-aged man who wasn't in scrubs standing still at the end of my bed while all staff were running around and doing their business.
I was having a non-verbal conversation with him and he was telling me to calm down, focus on breathing. He wore a tropical style button down shirt, one of those old school news boys hats and had a very pleasant demeanor. Mom showed me a photo of my grampa that I never had seen before, and it was the guy at the foot of my bed, and he died before I was even born.
I think she was out for 90 seconds or close to it. She wasn't religious or anything. She said that she remembered being in the room and seeing her dead uncle and cousin standing at the far end of the room watching everything going on.
Fun fact: she shared this information during an icebreaker "give us a fun fact about yourself. We talked for a while and he said I could go back with him, or stay. I looked down and saw myself in that hospital bed with my brother holding my hand. He felt it turn cold and I never saw him cry that way before. Went back into my body and felt more pain than I knew in my life. My great grandma pulled me out of the car and we walked through this really peaceful field of flowers. When I woke up two weeks later she was sitting on the edge of my bed and told me to tell my mom that everything was going to be okay.
My great grandma died when I was 10 and before that she had been bedridden after a stroke. I never saw her walk or heard her talk in my entire life. It was amazing and beautiful. The last thing I remembered were faces of the doctors and nurses above me while I was lying on my back. Then I flatlined.
The weirdest, unexplainable thing happened then and there — I suddenly could see the whole scene as a spectator, like I was a floating spirit in that room. I could see myself getting revived, saw my mom crying and my dad comforting her. Then, I saw a white entity shaped like my body, falling through the ceiling and slowly, like a leaf on the wind, falling down to eventually land inside my body. That's when that experience ended. I was put in a medically induced coma, and I woke up after some days, I don't remember.
I had stuff plugged into me, an IV, red glowing elastic ring on my finger etc. Anyway, I later mentioned to the doctors that I saw it all, I saw them using the defibrillators, my parents etc. No one really believed me and told me that I was probably dreaming and biasing my memories due to watching tv, but I know what I saw!
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