“Our destiny at death is probably the most important area of human experience into which we can inquire. According to the prevailing scientific world view, the destiny is a harsh one. Textbooks tell us in no uncertain terms that after the heart stops circulating blood, the brain is no longer nourished and begins to decay rapidly—within a quarter of an hour or so. At that point, the texts say, the patient’s personality is simply no more. It is irreparably destroyed. The individual ceases to exist.
“For centuries, medical schools have inculcated this grim, uncompromising concept into doctors and nurses—those who will be the ones to help us when we die. But has this view of human nature really been so well established as to allow of no doubt?
“Surprisingly, the experiences of the dying themselves often contradict the accepted medical view. What insights do we get from the dying? What do they experience? What do they ‘see’ at the end?
“Although most patients apparently drift into oblivion without awareness of it, there are some, clearly conscious to the end, who say they ‘see’ into the beyond and who are able to report their experiences before expiring. They see apparitions of deceased relatives and friends. They see religious and mythological figures. They see nonearthly environments characterized by light, beauty, and intense color. These experiences are transformative. They bring with them serenity, peace, elation, and religious emotions. The patients die a ‘good death’ in strange contrast to the usual gloom and misery commonly expected before expiration. Other deathbed patients, although they report no visions, nevertheless undergo the same transformation, which sometimes includes the cessation of pain.”
Osis and Haraldsson explain their research method. “First, we collected massive amounts of data through three extensive surveys of physicians and nurses who attended the dying. Second, our research was transcultural, drawing upon American and Indian medical people. Third, our data were collected carefully and systematically through modern sampling techniques, including questionnaires, and probing interviews. Fourth, our data were subjected to elaborate statistical, pattern, and content analysis through computer evaluation.
“Although we applied scientific rigor to this research, we did not neglect the experiential aspect of our inquiry. Death and dying is not just an intellectual problem. Rather, it is something which should be understood with the whole depth of our being. Therefore, we sought to examine it objectively and subjectively. Wherever possible, we obtained the direct words of the dying. This enables us to be in touch with what actually happened in the hospital rooms.
“What we found is both surprising and hopeful. This book will offer new evidence, based on observations by more than a thousand doctors and nurses, bearing on the question of postmortem survival. To anticipate our conclusions, we will state here that this evidence strongly suggests life after death—more strongly than any alternative hypothesis can explain the data. Neither medical, nor psychological, nor cultural conditioning can explain away deathbed visions. Moreover, they are relatively independent of age, sex, education, religion, and socioeconomic status. Taken in conjunction with other evidence obtained by competent research into this question—to be examine shortly—we feel that the total body of information makes possible a fact-based, rational, and therefore realistic belief in life after death.”
The following case report illustrates “one of more than a thousand cases of this sort” that Osis and Haraldsson collected:
A seventy-year old patient had seen here deceased husband several times and then she predicted her own death. She said that her husband had appeared in the window and motioned her to come out of the. House. The reason for his visits was to have her join him. Her daughter and other relatives were present when she predicted her death, laid out her burial clothes, laid down in bed for a nap, and died about one hour later. She seemed calm, resigned to death and, in fact, wanted to die. Before she saw her husband she didn’t speak about imminent death. Her doctor was so surprised by her sudden death, for which there were no sufficient medical reasons, that he checked if she had poisoned herself. He found neither signs of poisoning nor any such drugs in the house.
At the Hour of Death (Hastings House, 1997) written by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson reports on a four-year study involving fifty thousand terminally ill patients observed just before death by one thousand doctors and nurses in the United States and India.
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