Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
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Out-of Body Experiences and the Near-Death Experience Part 1
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]1. How NDEs will Prove the Survival of Consciousness After Death[/TD]
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Someday, someone is going to have a near-death experience and observe a scientifically controlled test object, such as a sign like "You are dead" which can only be seen if the observer is actually outside of their body.
However , this is only the first step.
Researchers must also do the following:[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style8"]a.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style8"]b.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style8"]c.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style1"]It may surprise some people to know that these kind of studies are going on right at this moment.
Indeed, it is only a matter of time when someone tells a doctor they saw the "You are dead" sign.
For test purposes, however, the sign will probably say something more cryptic to insure the uniqueness of such an event.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]2. Examples of Out-of-Body Visual Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"] A large number of near-death experiencers have witnessed verifiable events occurring outside of their body.
Unfortunately, such evidence does not constitute "scientific evidence."
The reason is because scientific evidence involves replication of the experience and the existence of strict controls over the events being witnessed.
However, the example I gave at the beginning of this page is the kind of test environment which can provide such scientific evidence.
Many examples of anecdotal evidence of verifiable perception are provided on this web page.
The following are three of the most interesting out-of-body testimonies from three NDEs.
They are from the near-death experiences of Dr. Dianne Morrissey, Dr. George Ritchie, and Reinee Pasarow.
They are exceptional because they are NDEs involving an extended out-of-body phase, when the experiencer observed events happening around their body.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]a. Dr. Dianne Morrissey's NDE and Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"]Dr. Dianne Morrissey is the author of the books You Can See The Light and Anyone Can See the Light.
She describes her beautiful NDE in detail in her video entitled Soul Journeys Beyond the Light.
It is one of the best videos I have ever seen.
When Dianne was twenty-eight years old, she was electrocuted and had a very profound NDE.
The following is the out-of-body aspect of her NDE reprinted by permission from her book Anyone Can See the Light:
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[TD="class: auto-style12"]"I bent over to pick up the plastic tubing.
As I began to straighten up, I accidentally bumped the tubing on the edge of the tank.
The water suddenly squirted across my face - the pain was so sharp, it felt as if a knife where slitting my cheek!
I screamed from the shock and pain, then felt a moment of temporary relief as the water crossed over my molars.
My reprieve was short-lived, however, as the electrified water rushed into my mouth. "As my body bent over in shock, I had the most uncanny knowledge that death was ahead of me. I began to mourn the loss of everything I'd known: the Earth, my home, my friends - all that I'd been aware of, all that I loved. Everything I'd believed to be true and lasting was slipping away from me. I was face to face with death, face to face with the unknown."
"My body was thrown backwards and to one side by the current. My body crashed to the floor, thrown with such force that my head went right through the drywall, about a foot above the floor. I never felt the injuries, however, because I was no longer in my body. I was actually watching my electrocution from above! How could I be out of my body and still be alive?
I wondered, astonished. "Suddenly, I was aware that I was inside a vast, seemingly infinite blackness. I wasn't sure where this blackness was in relationship to the Earth, but for some reason I was unafraid. My blackout period was brief, for I now found myself back in my home, but in a new form. I was transparent, yet I still looked like me. "How elated I felt! Now, out of my body, I had no worries, no cares. Never had I felt like this when I was "alive".
My entire spirit body was transparent, and I was inside a glowing white light that extended about three feet around me. At that moment, an awareness overtook me - I am not my physical body! This realization made me feel so free, so wonderful! My spirit was glowing with a white light that illuminated the entire room. "Then, I was up near the ceiling again. Everything still looked the same - the furnishings, the walls - but there was a new awareness about the dimension to the scene - it had become transparent.
I could see everything more clearly than ever before, and like a scientist, I found myself looking at life through a microscope, discovering minuscule particles of matter normally invisible. "I was now aware of the absence of physical sensations, yet I was feeling a heightened sense of awareness such as I'd never felt while alive. I knew I was different from the "Dianne" I had been, but I also knew I was "me".
It was similar to looking at your reflection in a mirror; you know you're not the reflection, but it does appear to be you. "Now, I saw that everything was shrouded by a mist. Despite a lack of gravity, I could easily control my direction, and when I moved into the living room, I noticed that I had just walked through the glass coffee table. Wow! How did I do that? I marveled. "Tuffy (her dog) suddenly entered the den and began nipping at my face and pawing at my arm, trying to get my body to wake up. I knew that his relentless attempts to awaken my physical body wouldn't work, yet I was proud of him for trying, and even hoped his efforts might work.
I wondered where his chum, Penny, was, and suddenly I was next to her in the backyard. I opened my mouth to talk to her and felt my tongue moving, but no sounds came out. I could distinctly hear my voice, and then realized it was coming from my mind. I tried several times to get Penny's attention, yelling, "Penny, can you see me? Penny, can you hear me?" Apparently she didn't, because there was no response. "Next, I walked around my backyard. As I looked through the walls of my house toward the front sidewalk, I noticed a man walking down the street.
Eagerly, I flew to him, right through the walls, and tried to get his attention. Staring deeply into his eyes, I said forcefully, "Can you help me? I need help." Then I tried to shake his shoulders, but he still didn't notice me. Frustrated, I tried to touch his shoulder to get him to look at me, and my hand went through his upper right shoulder blade and out his back. This startled me. "What am I to do? I wondered, becoming upset when I realized that the man could neither see nor hear me. Instantly, I was back in my yard again, Penny beside me. I noticed that whenever I felt any apprehension, I was instantly moved to a place of greater comfort. "On the way back to the den, I stopped right in the middle of the wall between rooms.
I sensed that I was to look down at something fantastic, and as I gazed downward, I saw a long silver cord coming out of my spirit body, right through the cheesecloth-like fabric I was wearing. The cord extended down and out in front of me, and as I turned around, I saw that the silver cord draped around and behind me, like an umbilical cord.
I followed it through the two hallway walls and into my den, where I saw it attached to the back of the head of my physical body. The cord was about an inch wide and sparkled like Christmas tree tinsel. "As soon as I saw that the silver cord was attached to my physical body, my spirit body was thrust into a dark tunnel. I moved through it with great speed, traveling faster than I could have imagined possible. Although the tunnel was filled with an all consuming darkness, I felt peaceful and unafraid." (Dr. Dianne Morrissey)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]b. Dr. George Ritchie's NDE and Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]In 1943, Dr. George Ritchie died of pneumonia and nine minutes later returned to life to tell about it.
The following is the account of the out-of-body aspect of his NDE excerpted from his excellent book Return From Tomorrow.
His follow-up book is My Life After Dying:
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[TD="class: style192"]"The men let go of my arms ... I heard a click and a whirr.
The whirr went on and on.
It was getting louder.
The whirr was inside my head and my knees were made of rubber.
They were bending and I was falling and all the time the whirr grew louder. I sat up with a start. What time was it? I looked at the bedside table but they'd taken the clock away. In fact, where was any of my stuff? "I jumped out of bed in alarm, looking for my clothes. My uniform wasn't on the chair. I turned around, then froze. Someone was lying in that bed. I took a step closer. He was quite a young man, with short brown hair, lying very still. But, the thing was impossible! I myself had just gotten out of that bed! For a moment I wrestled with the mystery of it. It was too strange to think about - and anyway I didn't have the time. "I went back past the offices and stepped out into the corridor.
A sergeant was coming along it carrying an instrument tray covered with a cloth. Probably he didn't know anything, but I was so glad to find someone awake that I started toward him. "'Excuse me, Sergeant,' I said. 'You haven't seen the ward boy for this unit, have you?' "He didn't answer. Didn't even glance at me. He just kept coming, straight at me, not slowing down. "'Look out!' I yelled, jumping out of his way. "The next minute he was past me, walking away down the corridor as if he had never seen me, though how we had kept from colliding I didn't know.
And then I saw something that gave me a new idea. Farther down the corridor was one of the heavy metal doors that led to the outside. I hurried toward it. Even if I had missed that train, I'd find some way of getting to Richmond! "Almost without knowing it I found myself outside, racing swiftly along, traveling faster in fact than I'd ever moved in my life. Looking down I was astonished to see not the ground, but the tops of mesquite bushes beneath me.
Already Camp Barkeley seemed to be far behind me as I sped over the dark frozen desert. My mind kept telling me that what I was doing was impossible, and yet ... it was happening. I was going to Richmond; somehow I had known that from the moment I burst through that hospital door. Going to Richmond a hundred times faster than any train on Earth could take me. "Almost immediately I noticed myself slowing down. Just below me now, where two streets came together, I caught a flickering blue glow. It came from a neon sign over the door of a red-roofed one-story building with a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer sign propped in the front window.
Cafe, the jittering letters over the door read, and from the windows light streamed onto the pavement. Staring down at it, I realized I had stopped moving altogether. Finding myself somehow suspended fifty feet in the air was an even stranger feeling than the whirlwind flight had been. But I had no time to puzzle over it, for down the sidewalk toward the all-night cafe a man came briskly walking. At least, I thought, I could find out from him what town this was and in what direction I was heading. Even as the idea occurred to me - as though thought and motion had become the same thing - I found myself down on the sidewalk, hurrying along at the stranger's side.
He was a civilian, maybe forty or forty-five, wearing a topcoat but no hat. He was obviously thinking hard about something because he never glanced my way as I fell into step beside him. "'Can you tell me please,' I said, 'What city this is?' "He kept right on walking. "'Please sir!' I said, speaking louder, 'I'm a stranger here and I'd appreciate it if ...' "We reached the cafe and he turned, reaching for the door handle. Was the fellow deaf?
I put out my left hand to tap his shoulder. There was nothing there. "I stood there in front of the door, gaping after him as he opened it and disappeared inside. It had been like touching thin air. Like no one had been there at all. And yet I had distinctly seen him, even to the beginnings of a black stubble on his chin where he needed a shave. "I backed away from the mystery of the substance-less man and leaned up against the guy wire of a telephone pole to think things through. My body went through that guy wire as though it too had not been there. "There on the sidewalk of that unknown city, I did some incredulous thinking. The strangest, most difficult thinking I had ever done.
The man in the cafe, this telephone pole ... suppose they were perfectly normal. Suppose I was the one who was - changed, somehow. What if in some impossible, unimaginable way, I lost my ... hardness. My ability to grasp things, to make contact with the world. Even to be seen! The fellow just now. It was obvious he never saw or heard me. "And suddenly I remembered the young man I had seen in the bed in that little hospital room. What if that had been ... me? Or anyhow, the material, concrete part of myself that in some unexplainable way I'd gotten separated from. What if the form which I had left lying in the hospital room in Texas was my own? "And if it were, how could I get back to it again? Why had I ever rushed off so unthinkingly? "I was moving again, speeding away from the city.
Below me was the broad river. I appeared to be going back, back in the direction I had come from, and it seemed to me I was flashing across space even faster than before. Hills, lakes, farms slipped away beneath me as I sped in an unswerving straight line over the dark nighttime land. I was standing in front of the base hospital. "And so began one of the strangest searches that can ever have taken place: the search for myself. From one ward to another of that enormous complex I rushed, pausing in each small room, stooping over the occupant of the bed, hurrying on. "I backed toward the doorway. The man in that bed was dead! I felt the same reluctance I had the previous time at being in a room with a dead person. But ... if that was my ring, then - then it was me, the separated part of me, lying under that sheet.
Did that mean that I was ... "It was the first time in this entire experience that the word death occurred to me in connection with what was happening. "But I wasn't dead! How could I be dead and still be awake? Thinking. Experiencing. Death was different. Death was ... I didn't know. Blanking out. Nothingness. I was me, wide awake, only without a physical body to function in. "Frantically I clawed at the sheet, trying to draw it back, trying to uncover the figure on the bed. All my efforts did not even stir a breeze in the silent little room. "Suddenly I was aware that it was brighter, a lot brighter, than it had been.
I stared in astonishment as the brightness increased, coming from nowhere, seeming to shine everywhere at once. All the light bulbs in the ward couldn't give off that much light. All the bulbs in the world couldn't! It was impossibly bright. It was like a million welders' lamps all blazing at once. "'I'm glad I don't have physical eyes at this moment,' I thought. 'This light would destroy the retina in a tenth of a second.' "'No, I corrected myself, not the light. He. He would be too bright to look at.' "For now I saw that it was not light but a man who had entered the room, or rather, a man made out of light, though this seemed no more possible to my mind than the incredible intensity of the brightness that made up his form." (Dr. George Ritchie)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]c. Reinee Pasarow's NDE and Out-Of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]Reinee Pasarow was as a teenager when she had a NDE after she became unconscious following an allergic food reaction.
While outside of her body, she could sense every sound, every action and even every thought of the persons people around her.
She observed two firemen's frantic efforts to revive her.
All the events she witnessed while out of her body - the conversations, the actions of the persons involved, the hospital scene - happened exactly as she remembered them.
Furthermore, aspects of her OBE have been reported by other people who have had OBEs which is remarkable because this type of information was something she did not know about at the time and would read about later.[/TD]
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[TD="class: style38"]"Then, just like that (clapping her hands), I became a ball of light or energy in the midst of this crowd that was circling a body.
I became massively aware, unlike any awareness I had had during physical existence.
I was not really aware of myself.
I was aware of everyone around me.
I was aware of my mother and my neighbors, and my friends and the firemen and what they were thinking and what they were feeling and what they were hoping and what they were praying.
This was such a pummeling input of emotion and information that I was all at once overwhelmed and confused, and rather disoriented.
"I followed their attention to something on the sidewalk and I looked at a body on the sidewalk. I looked at the curve of the wrist bone and I recognized it. I remember looking at it and thinking, "That looks so much like my wrist bone." And then I became aware that the thing on the sidewalk, that thing that suddenly became a piece of meat to me, was what I had identified as myself before, but had no connection with it other than that I had been with it for a very long time. But it had nothing to do with me because suddenly, I was more of a person than I had ever been before. I was more conscious than I could ever be. I was free of the limitations of being a physical being.
"I looked at my body and I was repulsed with the grief and the tumult around it and with the very idea that I had ever considered something physical to be my reality, to be a human reality.
"And with that (taps the table) again like this, I was bumped way up, up above some light wires. From that point I could watch everyone beneath me, but I was not as closely associated with them, [but] I was completely feeling everything they were feeling.
"I watched my mother and a boy come out of the house and up the hill which I could not have seen physically. I was very sad for my mother. I was very sad for my friend who kept calling me. And I was very sad for the child who had come out of the house. I was very sad that he would think I was dead. So my concern was for them. I spent my time observing them and calling to them - calling to them that everything was as it should be, that everything was fine, that I was free, that it was wonderful, that I loved them and that they loved me and that the bond, unlike physical bonds, would never be destroyed. I tried to communicate this to them over and over again and I realized that I had no mouth. I had no body. They could not hear what I was saying to them. I would have to leave them in the same hands I had left myself in the process of dying. With that I turned away, just sort of like a ball, just turned away.
"My attention turned away lovingly but knowing that there was nothing I could do. I turned away from them and began to pull up. I became aware (it was as if I were a camera on a space ship or something) of our place, my particular little street and then my particular little town. I kept pulling up and up and up to a point where I could observe the whole Earth. This was wonderful! (After Reinee's visit to heaven, she returns to where her body is located.)
"With a terribly hard crash, I became aware of the scene I had left earlier - the fire trucks, and now an ambulance. There were men who were picking up my body and loading it into the ambulance. I was in a state of complete grief. I felt that I had become Eve and was cast out of the garden of Eden.
"As I was descending down this tunnel, my heart was already attached to my home beyond. I was begging not to leave. I crashed down into this realm of existence and was suddenly confused by time and space. It was as if I had never existed physically. I was suddenly disoriented. My concern was for my mother, because she was by herself and she was losing a sixteen year old daughter. She knew that this was happening because the ambulance attendant looked at the driver in front and said, "DOA. DOA," which means of course dead on arrival. The driver turned off the siren and slowed down the ambulance. Before, he had been driving in a very reckless manner.
"We were coming out of the mountains. As we did that, my concern was for the pain of my mother. I simple wanted to comfort her and to wrap my soul around her. To assuage the loss of a daughter, the loss of a child, I found myself simply praying for her.
"I followed the ambulance to the hospital and I watched as my body was unloaded. My mother followed the gurney into the emergency room. I watched as the first doctor went to work on me. I wasn't particularly interested in the first doctor because the first doctor had, that day, been through motorcycle accidents coming out of the mountains. He had been through a very long day and he was not concerned with someone who had been brought in dead on arrival. He had no connection with me. He didn't care and had no affection. So I had no interest in watching what he did because my interest was based on affection and love.
"I then left the emergency room and was above my mother and some friends who had followed her into the other room. I again tried to communicate with them. I tried to let them know that, "This is a very joyous occasion. I am dead on arrival. Hopefully all would go well. They are never going to be able to revive me. I was going to be dead now. Death had become life to me. Death was not something to be frightened of, but something to look forward to."
"What happened then was the first doctor pronounced me dead and was sending my body off to the morgue. My own personal physician, who was a country doctor and a very gruff man, stormed into the emergency room in a tuxedo with his black bag. He looked at the nurse on the phone who was calling the morgue, and looked at the doctor who was washing his hands, and looked at my [covered] body and said, "What the hell happened here? Where is the patient?"
They said, "She was dead on arrival." He said, "The hell she was." He proceeded to scream at the other nurse who was sort of standing off in the corner, "I want injections of adrenaline. Bring them to me immediately and come over here and assist me." He began to go to work on my body. He began to beat on the chest and began to shock. I was simply terrified by this turn of events and disgusted that they would treat a body so brutally.
"All of a sudden I sort of became protective towards my body, even though I wanted nothing to do with it. I began to be protective. They could at least be nice about it. But they were beating on my chest and shocking my body, but I was up in the corner of the emergency room accompanied by other essences who were keeping me contained in that emergency room." (Reinee Pasarow)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style32"]Reinee then described how she finally returned to her body as a result of her doctor's last effort to revive her.
The medical professionals she talked to did not know how to deal with her experience.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]3. Verified Out-of-Body Perception In Near-Death Experiences[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"]The "holy grail" of NDE research is finding an undeniable answer to the question of whether consciousness can survive bodily death.
But before this can be answered, researchers must first determine whether consciousness can transcend the brain and function outside of it.
One way is to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are "veridical" (i.e., verified).
Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means.
Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital.
If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place.
It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are experiences outside of the physical body.
NDE research is coming very close to providing such undeniable evidence. What follows are some examples.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]a. Pam Reynolds's Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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In Dr. Michael Sabom's book, Light and Death, he includes the NDE account of a woman named Pam Reynolds who underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that seriously threatened her life.
The surgical procedure used to remove the aneurysm is known as "hypothermic cardiac arrest" or "standstill."
Pam's body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing were stopped, her brain waves were flattened, and all the blood was drained from her head.
For all practical purposes, she was put to death.
After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life.
But, during the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a profound NDE.
Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations of her surgery were later verified to be very accurate.
Pam's case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical perception evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
The following is the out-of-body aspect of her NDE in her own words:[/TD]
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"The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a Natural "D."
As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head.
The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became.
I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down.
It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ...I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder.
It was not like normal vision.
It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people. "I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ... "The saw-thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up.
I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that. "Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine.
I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize. "There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz - being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go.
The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel." (Pam meets her deceased relatives and then must return to her body.)"But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ... It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it. It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool.
No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ... It was like diving into a pool of ice water ... It hurt! When I came back, they were playing Hotel California and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more." (Pam Reynolds)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style38, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]b. Dr. Charles Tart's Case of Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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Dr. Charles T. Tart, www.issc-taste.org and www.paradigm-sys.com, is a transpersonal psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology.
He served as an instructor in psychiatry in the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia, and as a consultant on government funded parapsychological research at the Stanford Research Institute.
Dr. Tart, the author of The End of Materialism, is known for his experimental work in autoscopic out-of-body and near-death experiences. He is currently a professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis.
Dr. Tart published an article in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research which documents the OBE of a young woman who was one of his research subjects. What makes this particular OBE remarkable is that she was able to leave her physical body and read a 5-digit number from a significant distance and correctly give it to him upon return.
This is one of best examples of a veridical OBE occurring under laboratory conditions. Read the article here.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]c. Reverend George Rodonaia's NDE and Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]In Dr. Raymond Moody's documentary entitled, Life After Life, he interviewed a Russian scientist named Rev. George Rodonaia, who had a near-death experience during which he observed an infant crying in a nearby room.
George observed that no one could figure out why the infant was crying so persistently.
But George learned while out of his body that the infant had a broken arm.
When George returned to life, he told the infant's parents about the broken hip.
An x-ray revealed that the infant's arm was indeed broken.
This same incident is documented in Dr. Melvin Morse's book (along with Paul Perry) called Transformed by the Light.
The following excerpt from "Transformed by the Light" describes George's observation of this infant while he was out of his body.
Note that in Dr. Morse's book, he refers to George by his Russian name "Yuri".[/TD]
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[TD="class: style144"][During his NDE and while outside of his body], Yuri could go visit his family.
He saw his grieving wife and their two sons, both too small to understand that their father had been killed.
Then he visited his next-door neighbor..They had a new child, born a couple of days before Yuri's death.
Yuri could tell that they were upset by what happened to him.
But they were especially distressed by the fact that their child would not stop crying..No matter what they did he continued to cry.
When he slept it was short and fitful and then he would awaken, crying again.
They had taken him back to the doctors but they were stumped.
All the usual things such as colic were ruled out and they sent them home hoping the baby would eventually settle down..While there in this disembodied state, Yuri discovered something:
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[TD]"l could talk to the baby. It was amazing. I could not talk to the parents - my friends - but I could talk to the little boy who had just been born.
I asked him what was wrong.
No words were exchanged, but I asked him maybe through telepathy what was wrong.
He told me that his arm hurt.
And when he told me that, I was able to see that the bone was twisted and broken."[/TD]
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Eventually the doctor from Moscow came to perform the autopsy on Yuri.
When they moved his body from the cabinet to a gurney, his eyes flickered.
The doctor became suspicious and examined his eyes.
When they responded to light, he was immediately wheeled to emergency surgery and saved.
Yuri told his family about being "dead." No one believed him until he began to provide details about what he saw during his travels out of body.
Then they became less skeptical.
His diagnosis on the baby next door did the trick.
He told of visiting them that night and of their concern over their new child.
He told them that he had talked to the baby and discovered that he had a greenstick fracture of his arm.
The parents took the child to a doctor and he x-rayed the arm only to discover that Yuri's very long-distance diagnosis was right. (Rev. George Rodonaia)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]d. Dr. Pim van Lommel's Case of Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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In January of 2001, near-death experiences and near-death research earned greater scientific respect and credibility when the findings of a particular NDE study were published.
The distinguished British medical journal The Lancet published an article by Dr. Pim van Lommel of the Rijnstate Hospital in the Netherlands on the first large-scale study of NDEs which he conducted.
His study began in 1988 and lasted 13 years. It included 344 survivors of cardiac arrest from 10 Dutch hospitals.
Of these 344 survivors, 18 percent experienced a NDE.
And because Lommel and his staff conducted follow-up interviews with these patients over many years, they were able to rule out such factors as anoxia, seizures, medication, etc.
Lommel's findings confirmed prior research findings conducted by other near-death researchers.
It confirmed that NDEs are real and they cannot be explained by physiological or psychological causes alone.
Lommel also accepted the implication that consciousness survives death and that consciousness is not completely dependent upon the brain.
Lommel noted that only 10 seconds after the heart stops beating, the electroencephalogram goes dead.
At this point, there is no activity in the brain cortex and the brain cannot manufacture visions.
Within 10 minutes, brain stem activity ceases and irreparable brain damage can occur.
However, Lommel notes that some patients still reported being conscious at this point.
One particular example cited by Lommel is a man who came into the hospital already blue from a lack of oxygen.
The hospital staff spent 90 minutes trying to resuscitate him, using artificial respiration, heart massage and defibrillation, before they could move him to intensive care where he was remained in a coma for a week with brain damage.
But when the patient regained consciousness, he was able to describe events that occurred around him while he was brain damaged and out of his body.
This veridical evidence comes from a coronary-care-unit nurse who reported the veridical out-of-body experience of the comatose patient:[/TD]
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[TD]"During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit.
He had been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by.
After admission, he receives artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied.
When we wanted to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth.
I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the crash car.
Meanwhile, we continue extensive CPR.
After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose.
He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration.
Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment he sees me he says:
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[TD]"Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are."
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"I am very surprised. Then he elucidates:
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[TD]"Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth."
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"I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR.
When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR.
He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself.
At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die.
And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient's prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted.
The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR.
He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. Four weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man." (Dr. Pim Van Lommel)[/TD]
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Imagine that you are a patient in a hospital and surgery is being performed on you.
You are sound asleep.
You were sound asleep long before they wheeled into the operating room.
But while you are asleep something very strange happens.
During the operation, you are suddenly awakened to find yourself floating near the ceiling!
Down below are the doctors working on your body (as in the cartoon on the left).
You see a strange sign hanging from the ceiling which says "You are dead."
You watch as the doctor puts the electric paddles on your chest.
You have a wonderful peaceful feeling which you have never had before.
The doctors give your body a shock and you are back in your body sound asleep again.
Hours later, you awaken and tell the doctor about your out-of-body experience and the "You are dead" sign.
The doctor smiles and tells you, "Your heart stopped during surgery and we had to revive you." The doctor then explains to you, "You are part of a near-death study and you just had a near-death experience.
You are the first patient who has ever read that sign.
That sign can only be read by someone reading it from the vantage point of the ceiling.
And because you were able to read this sign and tell us about it, you have proven scientifically that the mind can function outside of the body.
A great scientific discovery has just occurred.
Congratulations.
You have proven scientifically that consciousness transcends our physical body and possibly death.
[/TD]You are sound asleep.
You were sound asleep long before they wheeled into the operating room.
But while you are asleep something very strange happens.
During the operation, you are suddenly awakened to find yourself floating near the ceiling!
Down below are the doctors working on your body (as in the cartoon on the left).
You see a strange sign hanging from the ceiling which says "You are dead."
You watch as the doctor puts the electric paddles on your chest.
You have a wonderful peaceful feeling which you have never had before.
The doctors give your body a shock and you are back in your body sound asleep again.
Hours later, you awaken and tell the doctor about your out-of-body experience and the "You are dead" sign.
The doctor smiles and tells you, "Your heart stopped during surgery and we had to revive you." The doctor then explains to you, "You are part of a near-death study and you just had a near-death experience.
You are the first patient who has ever read that sign.
That sign can only be read by someone reading it from the vantage point of the ceiling.
And because you were able to read this sign and tell us about it, you have proven scientifically that the mind can function outside of the body.
A great scientific discovery has just occurred.
Congratulations.
You have proven scientifically that consciousness transcends our physical body and possibly death.
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]1. How NDEs will Prove the Survival of Consciousness After Death[/TD]
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However , this is only the first step.
Researchers must also do the following:[/TD]
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Prove that consciousness can transcend the body by perceiving verifiable events while out of the body.
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[TD="class: auto-style8"]b.[/TD]
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The next step is the same as the first step except it occurs while the body is verifiably "dead" (i.e., clinical and brain death).
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Once the above can be proven, all the skeptics will have to admit that consciousness survives death.
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[TD="class: auto-style1"]It may surprise some people to know that these kind of studies are going on right at this moment.
Indeed, it is only a matter of time when someone tells a doctor they saw the "You are dead" sign.
For test purposes, however, the sign will probably say something more cryptic to insure the uniqueness of such an event.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]2. Examples of Out-of-Body Visual Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"] A large number of near-death experiencers have witnessed verifiable events occurring outside of their body.
Unfortunately, such evidence does not constitute "scientific evidence."
The reason is because scientific evidence involves replication of the experience and the existence of strict controls over the events being witnessed.
However, the example I gave at the beginning of this page is the kind of test environment which can provide such scientific evidence.
Many examples of anecdotal evidence of verifiable perception are provided on this web page.
The following are three of the most interesting out-of-body testimonies from three NDEs.
They are from the near-death experiences of Dr. Dianne Morrissey, Dr. George Ritchie, and Reinee Pasarow.
They are exceptional because they are NDEs involving an extended out-of-body phase, when the experiencer observed events happening around their body.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]a. Dr. Dianne Morrissey's NDE and Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"]Dr. Dianne Morrissey is the author of the books You Can See The Light and Anyone Can See the Light.
She describes her beautiful NDE in detail in her video entitled Soul Journeys Beyond the Light.
It is one of the best videos I have ever seen.
When Dianne was twenty-eight years old, she was electrocuted and had a very profound NDE.
The following is the out-of-body aspect of her NDE reprinted by permission from her book Anyone Can See the Light:
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[TD="class: auto-style12"]"I bent over to pick up the plastic tubing.
As I began to straighten up, I accidentally bumped the tubing on the edge of the tank.
The water suddenly squirted across my face - the pain was so sharp, it felt as if a knife where slitting my cheek!
I screamed from the shock and pain, then felt a moment of temporary relief as the water crossed over my molars.
My reprieve was short-lived, however, as the electrified water rushed into my mouth. "As my body bent over in shock, I had the most uncanny knowledge that death was ahead of me. I began to mourn the loss of everything I'd known: the Earth, my home, my friends - all that I'd been aware of, all that I loved. Everything I'd believed to be true and lasting was slipping away from me. I was face to face with death, face to face with the unknown."
"My body was thrown backwards and to one side by the current. My body crashed to the floor, thrown with such force that my head went right through the drywall, about a foot above the floor. I never felt the injuries, however, because I was no longer in my body. I was actually watching my electrocution from above! How could I be out of my body and still be alive?
I wondered, astonished. "Suddenly, I was aware that I was inside a vast, seemingly infinite blackness. I wasn't sure where this blackness was in relationship to the Earth, but for some reason I was unafraid. My blackout period was brief, for I now found myself back in my home, but in a new form. I was transparent, yet I still looked like me. "How elated I felt! Now, out of my body, I had no worries, no cares. Never had I felt like this when I was "alive".
My entire spirit body was transparent, and I was inside a glowing white light that extended about three feet around me. At that moment, an awareness overtook me - I am not my physical body! This realization made me feel so free, so wonderful! My spirit was glowing with a white light that illuminated the entire room. "Then, I was up near the ceiling again. Everything still looked the same - the furnishings, the walls - but there was a new awareness about the dimension to the scene - it had become transparent.
I could see everything more clearly than ever before, and like a scientist, I found myself looking at life through a microscope, discovering minuscule particles of matter normally invisible. "I was now aware of the absence of physical sensations, yet I was feeling a heightened sense of awareness such as I'd never felt while alive. I knew I was different from the "Dianne" I had been, but I also knew I was "me".
It was similar to looking at your reflection in a mirror; you know you're not the reflection, but it does appear to be you. "Now, I saw that everything was shrouded by a mist. Despite a lack of gravity, I could easily control my direction, and when I moved into the living room, I noticed that I had just walked through the glass coffee table. Wow! How did I do that? I marveled. "Tuffy (her dog) suddenly entered the den and began nipping at my face and pawing at my arm, trying to get my body to wake up. I knew that his relentless attempts to awaken my physical body wouldn't work, yet I was proud of him for trying, and even hoped his efforts might work.
I wondered where his chum, Penny, was, and suddenly I was next to her in the backyard. I opened my mouth to talk to her and felt my tongue moving, but no sounds came out. I could distinctly hear my voice, and then realized it was coming from my mind. I tried several times to get Penny's attention, yelling, "Penny, can you see me? Penny, can you hear me?" Apparently she didn't, because there was no response. "Next, I walked around my backyard. As I looked through the walls of my house toward the front sidewalk, I noticed a man walking down the street.
Eagerly, I flew to him, right through the walls, and tried to get his attention. Staring deeply into his eyes, I said forcefully, "Can you help me? I need help." Then I tried to shake his shoulders, but he still didn't notice me. Frustrated, I tried to touch his shoulder to get him to look at me, and my hand went through his upper right shoulder blade and out his back. This startled me. "What am I to do? I wondered, becoming upset when I realized that the man could neither see nor hear me. Instantly, I was back in my yard again, Penny beside me. I noticed that whenever I felt any apprehension, I was instantly moved to a place of greater comfort. "On the way back to the den, I stopped right in the middle of the wall between rooms.
I sensed that I was to look down at something fantastic, and as I gazed downward, I saw a long silver cord coming out of my spirit body, right through the cheesecloth-like fabric I was wearing. The cord extended down and out in front of me, and as I turned around, I saw that the silver cord draped around and behind me, like an umbilical cord.
I followed it through the two hallway walls and into my den, where I saw it attached to the back of the head of my physical body. The cord was about an inch wide and sparkled like Christmas tree tinsel. "As soon as I saw that the silver cord was attached to my physical body, my spirit body was thrust into a dark tunnel. I moved through it with great speed, traveling faster than I could have imagined possible. Although the tunnel was filled with an all consuming darkness, I felt peaceful and unafraid." (Dr. Dianne Morrissey)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]b. Dr. George Ritchie's NDE and Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]In 1943, Dr. George Ritchie died of pneumonia and nine minutes later returned to life to tell about it.
The following is the account of the out-of-body aspect of his NDE excerpted from his excellent book Return From Tomorrow.
His follow-up book is My Life After Dying:
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[TD="class: style192"]"The men let go of my arms ... I heard a click and a whirr.
The whirr went on and on.
It was getting louder.
The whirr was inside my head and my knees were made of rubber.
They were bending and I was falling and all the time the whirr grew louder. I sat up with a start. What time was it? I looked at the bedside table but they'd taken the clock away. In fact, where was any of my stuff? "I jumped out of bed in alarm, looking for my clothes. My uniform wasn't on the chair. I turned around, then froze. Someone was lying in that bed. I took a step closer. He was quite a young man, with short brown hair, lying very still. But, the thing was impossible! I myself had just gotten out of that bed! For a moment I wrestled with the mystery of it. It was too strange to think about - and anyway I didn't have the time. "I went back past the offices and stepped out into the corridor.
A sergeant was coming along it carrying an instrument tray covered with a cloth. Probably he didn't know anything, but I was so glad to find someone awake that I started toward him. "'Excuse me, Sergeant,' I said. 'You haven't seen the ward boy for this unit, have you?' "He didn't answer. Didn't even glance at me. He just kept coming, straight at me, not slowing down. "'Look out!' I yelled, jumping out of his way. "The next minute he was past me, walking away down the corridor as if he had never seen me, though how we had kept from colliding I didn't know.
And then I saw something that gave me a new idea. Farther down the corridor was one of the heavy metal doors that led to the outside. I hurried toward it. Even if I had missed that train, I'd find some way of getting to Richmond! "Almost without knowing it I found myself outside, racing swiftly along, traveling faster in fact than I'd ever moved in my life. Looking down I was astonished to see not the ground, but the tops of mesquite bushes beneath me.
Already Camp Barkeley seemed to be far behind me as I sped over the dark frozen desert. My mind kept telling me that what I was doing was impossible, and yet ... it was happening. I was going to Richmond; somehow I had known that from the moment I burst through that hospital door. Going to Richmond a hundred times faster than any train on Earth could take me. "Almost immediately I noticed myself slowing down. Just below me now, where two streets came together, I caught a flickering blue glow. It came from a neon sign over the door of a red-roofed one-story building with a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer sign propped in the front window.
Cafe, the jittering letters over the door read, and from the windows light streamed onto the pavement. Staring down at it, I realized I had stopped moving altogether. Finding myself somehow suspended fifty feet in the air was an even stranger feeling than the whirlwind flight had been. But I had no time to puzzle over it, for down the sidewalk toward the all-night cafe a man came briskly walking. At least, I thought, I could find out from him what town this was and in what direction I was heading. Even as the idea occurred to me - as though thought and motion had become the same thing - I found myself down on the sidewalk, hurrying along at the stranger's side.
He was a civilian, maybe forty or forty-five, wearing a topcoat but no hat. He was obviously thinking hard about something because he never glanced my way as I fell into step beside him. "'Can you tell me please,' I said, 'What city this is?' "He kept right on walking. "'Please sir!' I said, speaking louder, 'I'm a stranger here and I'd appreciate it if ...' "We reached the cafe and he turned, reaching for the door handle. Was the fellow deaf?
I put out my left hand to tap his shoulder. There was nothing there. "I stood there in front of the door, gaping after him as he opened it and disappeared inside. It had been like touching thin air. Like no one had been there at all. And yet I had distinctly seen him, even to the beginnings of a black stubble on his chin where he needed a shave. "I backed away from the mystery of the substance-less man and leaned up against the guy wire of a telephone pole to think things through. My body went through that guy wire as though it too had not been there. "There on the sidewalk of that unknown city, I did some incredulous thinking. The strangest, most difficult thinking I had ever done.
The man in the cafe, this telephone pole ... suppose they were perfectly normal. Suppose I was the one who was - changed, somehow. What if in some impossible, unimaginable way, I lost my ... hardness. My ability to grasp things, to make contact with the world. Even to be seen! The fellow just now. It was obvious he never saw or heard me. "And suddenly I remembered the young man I had seen in the bed in that little hospital room. What if that had been ... me? Or anyhow, the material, concrete part of myself that in some unexplainable way I'd gotten separated from. What if the form which I had left lying in the hospital room in Texas was my own? "And if it were, how could I get back to it again? Why had I ever rushed off so unthinkingly? "I was moving again, speeding away from the city.
Below me was the broad river. I appeared to be going back, back in the direction I had come from, and it seemed to me I was flashing across space even faster than before. Hills, lakes, farms slipped away beneath me as I sped in an unswerving straight line over the dark nighttime land. I was standing in front of the base hospital. "And so began one of the strangest searches that can ever have taken place: the search for myself. From one ward to another of that enormous complex I rushed, pausing in each small room, stooping over the occupant of the bed, hurrying on. "I backed toward the doorway. The man in that bed was dead! I felt the same reluctance I had the previous time at being in a room with a dead person. But ... if that was my ring, then - then it was me, the separated part of me, lying under that sheet.
Did that mean that I was ... "It was the first time in this entire experience that the word death occurred to me in connection with what was happening. "But I wasn't dead! How could I be dead and still be awake? Thinking. Experiencing. Death was different. Death was ... I didn't know. Blanking out. Nothingness. I was me, wide awake, only without a physical body to function in. "Frantically I clawed at the sheet, trying to draw it back, trying to uncover the figure on the bed. All my efforts did not even stir a breeze in the silent little room. "Suddenly I was aware that it was brighter, a lot brighter, than it had been.
I stared in astonishment as the brightness increased, coming from nowhere, seeming to shine everywhere at once. All the light bulbs in the ward couldn't give off that much light. All the bulbs in the world couldn't! It was impossibly bright. It was like a million welders' lamps all blazing at once. "'I'm glad I don't have physical eyes at this moment,' I thought. 'This light would destroy the retina in a tenth of a second.' "'No, I corrected myself, not the light. He. He would be too bright to look at.' "For now I saw that it was not light but a man who had entered the room, or rather, a man made out of light, though this seemed no more possible to my mind than the incredible intensity of the brightness that made up his form." (Dr. George Ritchie)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]c. Reinee Pasarow's NDE and Out-Of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]Reinee Pasarow was as a teenager when she had a NDE after she became unconscious following an allergic food reaction.
While outside of her body, she could sense every sound, every action and even every thought of the persons people around her.
She observed two firemen's frantic efforts to revive her.
All the events she witnessed while out of her body - the conversations, the actions of the persons involved, the hospital scene - happened exactly as she remembered them.
Furthermore, aspects of her OBE have been reported by other people who have had OBEs which is remarkable because this type of information was something she did not know about at the time and would read about later.[/TD]
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[TD="class: style38"]"Then, just like that (clapping her hands), I became a ball of light or energy in the midst of this crowd that was circling a body.
I became massively aware, unlike any awareness I had had during physical existence.
I was not really aware of myself.
I was aware of everyone around me.
I was aware of my mother and my neighbors, and my friends and the firemen and what they were thinking and what they were feeling and what they were hoping and what they were praying.
This was such a pummeling input of emotion and information that I was all at once overwhelmed and confused, and rather disoriented.
"I followed their attention to something on the sidewalk and I looked at a body on the sidewalk. I looked at the curve of the wrist bone and I recognized it. I remember looking at it and thinking, "That looks so much like my wrist bone." And then I became aware that the thing on the sidewalk, that thing that suddenly became a piece of meat to me, was what I had identified as myself before, but had no connection with it other than that I had been with it for a very long time. But it had nothing to do with me because suddenly, I was more of a person than I had ever been before. I was more conscious than I could ever be. I was free of the limitations of being a physical being.
"I looked at my body and I was repulsed with the grief and the tumult around it and with the very idea that I had ever considered something physical to be my reality, to be a human reality.
"And with that (taps the table) again like this, I was bumped way up, up above some light wires. From that point I could watch everyone beneath me, but I was not as closely associated with them, [but] I was completely feeling everything they were feeling.
"I watched my mother and a boy come out of the house and up the hill which I could not have seen physically. I was very sad for my mother. I was very sad for my friend who kept calling me. And I was very sad for the child who had come out of the house. I was very sad that he would think I was dead. So my concern was for them. I spent my time observing them and calling to them - calling to them that everything was as it should be, that everything was fine, that I was free, that it was wonderful, that I loved them and that they loved me and that the bond, unlike physical bonds, would never be destroyed. I tried to communicate this to them over and over again and I realized that I had no mouth. I had no body. They could not hear what I was saying to them. I would have to leave them in the same hands I had left myself in the process of dying. With that I turned away, just sort of like a ball, just turned away.
"My attention turned away lovingly but knowing that there was nothing I could do. I turned away from them and began to pull up. I became aware (it was as if I were a camera on a space ship or something) of our place, my particular little street and then my particular little town. I kept pulling up and up and up to a point where I could observe the whole Earth. This was wonderful! (After Reinee's visit to heaven, she returns to where her body is located.)
"With a terribly hard crash, I became aware of the scene I had left earlier - the fire trucks, and now an ambulance. There were men who were picking up my body and loading it into the ambulance. I was in a state of complete grief. I felt that I had become Eve and was cast out of the garden of Eden.
"As I was descending down this tunnel, my heart was already attached to my home beyond. I was begging not to leave. I crashed down into this realm of existence and was suddenly confused by time and space. It was as if I had never existed physically. I was suddenly disoriented. My concern was for my mother, because she was by herself and she was losing a sixteen year old daughter. She knew that this was happening because the ambulance attendant looked at the driver in front and said, "DOA. DOA," which means of course dead on arrival. The driver turned off the siren and slowed down the ambulance. Before, he had been driving in a very reckless manner.
"We were coming out of the mountains. As we did that, my concern was for the pain of my mother. I simple wanted to comfort her and to wrap my soul around her. To assuage the loss of a daughter, the loss of a child, I found myself simply praying for her.
"I followed the ambulance to the hospital and I watched as my body was unloaded. My mother followed the gurney into the emergency room. I watched as the first doctor went to work on me. I wasn't particularly interested in the first doctor because the first doctor had, that day, been through motorcycle accidents coming out of the mountains. He had been through a very long day and he was not concerned with someone who had been brought in dead on arrival. He had no connection with me. He didn't care and had no affection. So I had no interest in watching what he did because my interest was based on affection and love.
"I then left the emergency room and was above my mother and some friends who had followed her into the other room. I again tried to communicate with them. I tried to let them know that, "This is a very joyous occasion. I am dead on arrival. Hopefully all would go well. They are never going to be able to revive me. I was going to be dead now. Death had become life to me. Death was not something to be frightened of, but something to look forward to."
"What happened then was the first doctor pronounced me dead and was sending my body off to the morgue. My own personal physician, who was a country doctor and a very gruff man, stormed into the emergency room in a tuxedo with his black bag. He looked at the nurse on the phone who was calling the morgue, and looked at the doctor who was washing his hands, and looked at my [covered] body and said, "What the hell happened here? Where is the patient?"
They said, "She was dead on arrival." He said, "The hell she was." He proceeded to scream at the other nurse who was sort of standing off in the corner, "I want injections of adrenaline. Bring them to me immediately and come over here and assist me." He began to go to work on my body. He began to beat on the chest and began to shock. I was simply terrified by this turn of events and disgusted that they would treat a body so brutally.
"All of a sudden I sort of became protective towards my body, even though I wanted nothing to do with it. I began to be protective. They could at least be nice about it. But they were beating on my chest and shocking my body, but I was up in the corner of the emergency room accompanied by other essences who were keeping me contained in that emergency room." (Reinee Pasarow)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style32"]Reinee then described how she finally returned to her body as a result of her doctor's last effort to revive her.
The medical professionals she talked to did not know how to deal with her experience.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style33, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]3. Verified Out-of-Body Perception In Near-Death Experiences[/TD]
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[TD="class: style136"]The "holy grail" of NDE research is finding an undeniable answer to the question of whether consciousness can survive bodily death.
But before this can be answered, researchers must first determine whether consciousness can transcend the brain and function outside of it.
One way is to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are "veridical" (i.e., verified).
Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means.
Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital.
If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place.
It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are experiences outside of the physical body.
NDE research is coming very close to providing such undeniable evidence. What follows are some examples.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]a. Pam Reynolds's Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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In Dr. Michael Sabom's book, Light and Death, he includes the NDE account of a woman named Pam Reynolds who underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that seriously threatened her life.
The surgical procedure used to remove the aneurysm is known as "hypothermic cardiac arrest" or "standstill."
Pam's body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing were stopped, her brain waves were flattened, and all the blood was drained from her head.
For all practical purposes, she was put to death.
After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life.
But, during the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a profound NDE.
Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations of her surgery were later verified to be very accurate.
Pam's case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical perception evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
The following is the out-of-body aspect of her NDE in her own words:[/TD]
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"The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a Natural "D."
As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head.
The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became.
I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down.
It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ...I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder.
It was not like normal vision.
It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people. "I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ... "The saw-thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up.
I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that. "Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine.
I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize. "There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz - being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go.
The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel." (Pam meets her deceased relatives and then must return to her body.)"But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ... It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it. It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool.
No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ... It was like diving into a pool of ice water ... It hurt! When I came back, they were playing Hotel California and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more." (Pam Reynolds)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style38, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]b. Dr. Charles Tart's Case of Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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Dr. Charles T. Tart, www.issc-taste.org and www.paradigm-sys.com, is a transpersonal psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology.
He served as an instructor in psychiatry in the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia, and as a consultant on government funded parapsychological research at the Stanford Research Institute.
Dr. Tart, the author of The End of Materialism, is known for his experimental work in autoscopic out-of-body and near-death experiences. He is currently a professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis.
Dr. Tart published an article in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research which documents the OBE of a young woman who was one of his research subjects. What makes this particular OBE remarkable is that she was able to leave her physical body and read a 5-digit number from a significant distance and correctly give it to him upon return.
This is one of best examples of a veridical OBE occurring under laboratory conditions. Read the article here.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]c. Reverend George Rodonaia's NDE and Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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[TD="class: style46"]In Dr. Raymond Moody's documentary entitled, Life After Life, he interviewed a Russian scientist named Rev. George Rodonaia, who had a near-death experience during which he observed an infant crying in a nearby room.
George observed that no one could figure out why the infant was crying so persistently.
But George learned while out of his body that the infant had a broken arm.
When George returned to life, he told the infant's parents about the broken hip.
An x-ray revealed that the infant's arm was indeed broken.
This same incident is documented in Dr. Melvin Morse's book (along with Paul Perry) called Transformed by the Light.
The following excerpt from "Transformed by the Light" describes George's observation of this infant while he was out of his body.
Note that in Dr. Morse's book, he refers to George by his Russian name "Yuri".[/TD]
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[TD="class: style144"][During his NDE and while outside of his body], Yuri could go visit his family.
He saw his grieving wife and their two sons, both too small to understand that their father had been killed.
Then he visited his next-door neighbor..They had a new child, born a couple of days before Yuri's death.
Yuri could tell that they were upset by what happened to him.
But they were especially distressed by the fact that their child would not stop crying..No matter what they did he continued to cry.
When he slept it was short and fitful and then he would awaken, crying again.
They had taken him back to the doctors but they were stumped.
All the usual things such as colic were ruled out and they sent them home hoping the baby would eventually settle down..While there in this disembodied state, Yuri discovered something:
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[TD]"l could talk to the baby. It was amazing. I could not talk to the parents - my friends - but I could talk to the little boy who had just been born.
I asked him what was wrong.
No words were exchanged, but I asked him maybe through telepathy what was wrong.
He told me that his arm hurt.
And when he told me that, I was able to see that the bone was twisted and broken."[/TD]
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When they moved his body from the cabinet to a gurney, his eyes flickered.
The doctor became suspicious and examined his eyes.
When they responded to light, he was immediately wheeled to emergency surgery and saved.
Yuri told his family about being "dead." No one believed him until he began to provide details about what he saw during his travels out of body.
Then they became less skeptical.
His diagnosis on the baby next door did the trick.
He told of visiting them that night and of their concern over their new child.
He told them that he had talked to the baby and discovered that he had a greenstick fracture of his arm.
The parents took the child to a doctor and he x-rayed the arm only to discover that Yuri's very long-distance diagnosis was right. (Rev. George Rodonaia)[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style36, bgcolor: #FDEDD9"]d. Dr. Pim van Lommel's Case of Verified Out-of-Body Perception[/TD]
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In January of 2001, near-death experiences and near-death research earned greater scientific respect and credibility when the findings of a particular NDE study were published.
The distinguished British medical journal The Lancet published an article by Dr. Pim van Lommel of the Rijnstate Hospital in the Netherlands on the first large-scale study of NDEs which he conducted.
His study began in 1988 and lasted 13 years. It included 344 survivors of cardiac arrest from 10 Dutch hospitals.
Of these 344 survivors, 18 percent experienced a NDE.
And because Lommel and his staff conducted follow-up interviews with these patients over many years, they were able to rule out such factors as anoxia, seizures, medication, etc.
Lommel's findings confirmed prior research findings conducted by other near-death researchers.
It confirmed that NDEs are real and they cannot be explained by physiological or psychological causes alone.
Lommel also accepted the implication that consciousness survives death and that consciousness is not completely dependent upon the brain.
Lommel noted that only 10 seconds after the heart stops beating, the electroencephalogram goes dead.
At this point, there is no activity in the brain cortex and the brain cannot manufacture visions.
Within 10 minutes, brain stem activity ceases and irreparable brain damage can occur.
However, Lommel notes that some patients still reported being conscious at this point.
One particular example cited by Lommel is a man who came into the hospital already blue from a lack of oxygen.
The hospital staff spent 90 minutes trying to resuscitate him, using artificial respiration, heart massage and defibrillation, before they could move him to intensive care where he was remained in a coma for a week with brain damage.
But when the patient regained consciousness, he was able to describe events that occurred around him while he was brain damaged and out of his body.
This veridical evidence comes from a coronary-care-unit nurse who reported the veridical out-of-body experience of the comatose patient:[/TD]
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[TD]"During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit.
He had been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by.
After admission, he receives artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied.
When we wanted to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth.
I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the crash car.
Meanwhile, we continue extensive CPR.
After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose.
He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration.
Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment he sees me he says:
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[TD]"Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are."
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"I am very surprised. Then he elucidates:
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[TD]"Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth."
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"I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR.
When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR.
He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself.
At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die.
And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient's prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted.
The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR.
He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. Four weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man." (Dr. Pim Van Lommel)[/TD]
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Started noticing a while back but wasn't sure enough to say anything, or maybe there was no need. Not sure if there is anything to it at all. Have you seen the series of books by 'Jed McKenna'? There is some speculation as to whether he exists or not, but a lot of what's in those resonates with what is going on with me. Interesting read as well. I found them for download in .pdf. Lemme guess it was about two years of crapola for you then? 
