STEMI heart attack ends fear of dying

On 3/28/19 I experienced what I now know to have been a STEMI heart attack. I managed to drive myself to the hospital, where I collapsed at the entrance of the emergency room waiting room. I was found, loaded onto a gurney, and whisked to what I now know was the cardiac catheter lab. I was in and out of consciousness and struggling to breathe. A squad of heathcare professionals surrounded me and various members took turns leaning over me to yell instructions and questions. Being unable to breathe, I was unable to speak. This caused the squad to repeat the same questions louder and sometimes nose-to-nose. How rude, I thought; I just wanted them to leave me alone.

Suddenly, I felt better. I wondered how they did that. Not only did I feel symptom free; I felt great! I felt buoyant, focused, and incredibly peaceful. My reverie was interrupted when I heard another guy in the room making groaning and choking noises. I wondered who he was and how he got in there. I decided to have a closer look as I was mainly interested as to whether they were rudely yelling at him as they had been at me. I approached and looked over their shoulders and sure enough, they were nose to nose with him yelling, 'Mr. X (my name), Mr. X, stay with us Mr. X.' 'No way,' I thought to myself, 'Here is ultra-pleasant and there is not. I'm staying put.'

It took me some time to figure out that if Mr. X was lying on that treatment table about 30 feet away, then who was having these thoughts and perceptions? The idea that I already had died crossed my mind. I realized that my internal dialogue was occurring in grammatically correct English and that I was able to have thoughts, deductions, and decisions. I concluded that my brain's executive functions were intact. I decided to test my short-term memory. Sure enough, I could remember everything leading up to collapsing at the entrance to the emergency room. Not only that but I could remember all of it in exquisite, vivid detail. I then decided to test my long-term memory and arbitrarily chose 8th grade. Immediately, I was furnished a rush of detailed memories. The sharpness and vividness of those memories quickly overwhelmed me. I wondered, 'Where could all that have been stored?' I concluded that my long term memory system was intact and it was much broader and deeper than I believed possible.

I began to get lost in the peaceful feeling I was experiencing. It was the peace which surpassed all understanding, and I wanted or needed nothing more, ever. I don't know how long I remained in this state but I eventually decided to do a little exploring.

Immediately, I found myself standing on a short-grass prairie and gazing at the horizon. There were no trees, no roads, no animals, or any fences. It was just me and the endless prairie. As I studied the scene, I realized that out on the horizon was a black, cylindrical, horizontal cloud, skimming along the surface of the land. It stretched out of sight in both directions. I felt the immense energy that was headed my way. I was fascinated by the cloud and got lost in it. Suddenly, I realized that the cloud was death, or at least my brain's symbolic projection of death. I knew if the cloud touched me, I was dead.

Two thoughts occurred to me. The first was that I couldn't understand why I still felt totally relaxed and peaceful. Shouldn't I be feeling pain, fear, or panic? A voice inside my head said, 'No.' The second thought was, 'Shouldn't I being inventorying regrets and having a life review?' Again, the voice inside my head said, 'No need. You do a lot of that back in the world.' And that was that.

I turned my attention back to the cloud and was surprised to see that it had gotten much closer. It wasn't touching me yet, but with a running start I could spit into it. I tried to form a thought but was utterly unable to do so. I took this as a sign that physical death was imminent. I felt myself entering the gravitational pull of the black cloud.

At that instant, I heard a voice from behind me, just over my right shoulder. The voice said, 'Where's the tunnel of light? Where are the loving dead relatives beckoning you forth? Where are the angels of light urging you to fear not and be of good cheer?' The voice was affectionate and light-hearted. At that instant, I could breathe. I knew with certainty that I would live. I re-inhabited my body with a thud, a development one would think that would cause great jubilation. It did not. My first thought was, 'This thing feels like it's made of wet concrete. It must weigh a ton. I'll never be able to move it. How does anyone do it.'

Then, I went unconscious for an indeterminate length of time and awoke amidst all kinds of electrodes and beeping equipment. The nurse happily informed me that I was a lucky man, that I had just survived a STEMI heart attack.

My recovery produced some amusing anecdotes but was surprisingly easy. As is suggested by the above, I had some prior information on NDEs because I had read several NDE accounts back in the 1970s. I never floated, I never entered a tunnel of light, and I was never melted by the overwhelming awe and unity of the universe. The afterlife and the experience of consciousness without corporality seem like givens. For me the takeaway of my experience was: Nothing hurt, and the afterlife tenderly awaits your arrival. 

https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1jeff_l_nde_9453.html

Experience while unconscious due to plane crash

On Sunday, July 17, 2022, I was out and about with my bearded-dragon lizard, Lemmy. We were walking through the drainage tunnels as a shortcut to our destination. We were resting in an open part of the wash situated directly behind the runways of North Las Vegas Airport. I was sitting back watching the small planes takeoff and land. My little buddy was sitting a few feet away sunbathing. I was taking a long awaited drink from my water bottle as I watched a small, single-engine Cessna making a right turn in my direction and preparing to land. I watched another small plane descending behind it. At least it appeared that way, from my vantage point. I expected the planes to pass directly overhead of me to land. But, to my horror, I watch as the planes collide midair about 50 feet above me.

I scramble to my feet, grabbed Lemmy, and sprinted towards the steep driveway-like slopes of the storm drain. When I heard the deafening sound of an explosion, I was thrown forward with tremendous force while pelted by small pieces of shrapnel. I went unconscious as I hit the ground.

When I regained consciousness, I saw nothing but a dark tunnel. I thought I imagined the whole incident, and looked around for Lemmy. But he wasn't there. I freaked out and ran towards the end of the tunnel. I was blinded by an intensely, bright light. Then, I found myself in different location. I was a grassy oasis-type of place.

This confused me as I was greeted by a strange, robed figure who led me down a path to a field. Numerous people were sitting there. I recognized my grandmother, great aunt, and a close family friend. All of them had died when I was younger. I ask the robed figure, "Who are you?" Instead of getting an answer, everyone else was asking me what I was doing there so early. I replied, "I don't know." I relayed the story that there was a crash, I passed out, and woke up somewhere else without Lemmy. I asked if they had seen him and demanded that I get to him. The robed man placed one hand on my forehead and everything became blurry and dark.

I open my eyes. This time, I found myself on the ground and in a lot of pain. As I stood up, I saw the burning wreckage of the small Cessna about 20 feet away from me. The pungent smell of burning flesh and metal was very strong. I frantically looked around for Lemmy and found him a few feet away from me. I picked him up and dialed 911. I explaining the situation while cautiously inching closer to the burning wreckage. I wanted to see if anyone had managed to survive. It was so horrible that although it will forever be ingrained in my memory, some things are just better left un-shared. I suffering a broken knee and a fractured wrist. Lemmy suffering a broken forelimb and a spinal displacement. We spent a day in the hospital. The nurses were so nice to me and little Lemmy. They even made him his own little splint for his arm. In the end we were okay. 

https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1iain_t_nde.html 

Near-death experience reported to NDERF

I had been on a long music tour with Country artist Merle Haggard. We had traveled all the way to the upper western corner of Canada from California and then returned to California. Most of the trip I had spent in the bus bunk with my laptop computer being my connection to the outside world. We traveled for days, probably 4 or 5.

When we finally got back to California I got in my little car and headed for my home about 40 minutes North on interstate five. I hadn't noticed yet that I had become badly dehydrated during the long trip.

I drove to my house in the mountains with little trouble, but it was morning and I was restless. My brother called me from the local Casino and wanted me to come down and play some slots with him. Although I felt light headed, I was still wanting to do something to break my feeling of restlessness from the long trip on the tour bus. I got in my car and headed back into town.

I arrived at the Casino to find my brother and a friend playing slots at the bar. I ordered an orange juice since I was remarkably thirsty and it was too early for a beer.

I sat on the bar stool for about 10 minutes playing Keno with my brother when I began to feel extremely light headed. I could tell I was going to pass out, so out of reflex I tried to stand up to try to regain control of myself. Then everything went dark. My brother says he saw me stand straight up and then become stiff like a board and fall directly backward onto the concrete floor. He also said that blood started to pool at the back of my head near the impact although I don't remember any of that.

Suddenly I was in an ethereal space, floating without my body. I remember being hyper aware of everything around me and I could see my body on the floor with my brother and our friend shaking me and yelling at me to wake up!

The first thought I had was "man, I'm glad that's over with!". I also remember being amazed that my sense of humor was still intact, and that I was still "ME" in this other place. I remember feeling so good and so light with no cares at all. I felt like I was finally going home and immediately was experiencing a presence through my being that I was communicating with instantly. It said to me first "Don't worry, we've got ya". Every thought I had was instantly answered as soon as I thought it. Time seemed to be irrelevant and I didn't care because I was enveloped in a blanket of what I could only describe as pure love and acceptance. I instantly knew everything was ok and I was welcome here (wherever here was). 

I then felt my focus going out into the heavens into a warm dark space with light all around. I knew I was connected to everything instantly and I knew I wanted to stay here. I can't overstate how much it felt like I had already been there before and that it felt like home overwhelmingly.

Then I had the thought that I never wanted to leave this place and wanted to continue further. As soon as I had that thought came the knowing that I had to return to my body because there was more I had to learn on Earth. I felt slightly disappointed at this thought but my bravery kicked in and I felt my focus returning to my life on Earth. It was then that I had several flashes from the past of interactions I had with others on Earth and I could feel and sense the emotions of everyone involved in the exchange like they were my own thoughts and emotions. I then understood the way that every little action we take in our lives echoes in this place forever and that we are all connected to each other and to God.

I cannot say if I was communicating with God or something else but I could feel the presence of what I can only describe as God from the moment I transmuted into this form and space. I felt a tug back toward my body and felt myself going through a dark tunnel that ended with my eyes opening slowly and hearing my brother and our friend yelling my name.

The paramedics had shown up by then and I was carried out on a gurney to the ambulance. I tried to communicate what I had just experienced but was unable to at the time. The paramedic told me I was in shock which slowly subsided. I spent the night in the hospital and even received a visit from my employer Merle Haggard that night in the hospital which was a wonderful thing!

I haven't talked about my experience much until I began seeing NDE videos on youtube with other people describing their experiences. It wasn't until then that I realized what had actually happened to me. Since the episode, I no longer am afraid of death because I know in my core that we continue to be ourselves after we leave this body. It has changed my thinking on the subject profoundly. I am very grateful that I was able to get a glimpse of the other side. Since then, I have lost quite a few friends and family who were close to me and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will see them again and that they are experiencing the same love and eternal playground that I got to visit on that fateful day.

Doug C NDE 9502 at https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1doug_c_nde_9502.html. 

Ptolemy Tompkins: the imaginal state of mind

Ptolemy Tompkins in his 2012 book, The Modern Book of the Dead, writes that the nineteenth century poet and near-death researcher, Frederick Myers, proposed the word “imaginal” to describe a state of mind that could be understood as both real and imaginary. Tompkins suggests we might conceive of this state of consciousness as “a plane of experience that is every bit as real as the physical world we experience" while in our physical bodies, "but that is also much more elastic; a world that blooms and buzzes a hundredfold more vividly and intensely—and personally—than the one we are in right now.” 

If we add to this imaginal dimension Myers assertion that the mind is not simply a product of the brain—which now has been scientifically verified—we have “an entirely new perspective on the fate not just of consciousness, but of our particular, individual, personal consciousness after the body has been left behind. A perspective that allows us to continue to believe in the existence of the spirit in the age of science, and that allows us also to appreciate different spiritual perspectives without insisting that one be right and all the others wrong.”

This perspective enables us “to take the afterlife descriptions of, say, a Brazilian Indian and an Inuit Eskimo seriously and respectfully, without having to literally envision the afterworld as a thick tropical jungle or a snow-covered stretch of northern tundra.”

 

Ptolemy Tompkins, The Modern Book of the Dead (Atria Books, 2012), 112-113.

Near-death experiences under general anesthesia

Radiation oncologist Jeremy Long writes: "If near-death experiences were solely due to physical brain function, NDEs under general anesthesia should have less consciousness and alertness than other NDEs. But that is not what the NDERF studies found. The NDERF studies found that typical NDEs happen under anesthesia, usually with greater consciousness and alertness as commonly described in all NDEs. 

Either general anesthesia alone or cardiac arrest alone results in unconsciousness without any possibility of a lucid memory. Thus, typical near-death experiences occurring while under general anesthesia are doubly medically inexplicable. This is powerful evidence that consciousness can function apart from the physical body and separate from biological brain function.

"Bruce Greyson, MD also reported near-death experiences that occurred under general anesthesia:

In our collection of NDEs, 127 out of 578 NDE cases (22%) occurred under general anesthesia, and they included such features as OBEs that involved experiencers’ watching medical personnel working on their bodies, an unusually bright or vivid light, meeting deceased persons, and thoughts, memories, and sensations that were clearer than usual.

"Unlike NDEs, anesthesia awareness experiences are often unpleasant, painful, and frightening experiences. Anesthesia awareness more often involves brief and fragmentary memories with hearing described more than vision.

"Near-death experiences under general anesthesia show that full consciousness can exist separately from the physical body. NDEs arising while under general anesthesia are robust evidence that consciousness survives bodily death."

Jeffrey Long, MD, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights." In the next several posts I will share excerpts from Long's 2021 article. Footnotes have been deleted. The complete text is available as a pdf at https://www.nderf.org.

 

The mystery of Christ: a book written in our heart

Scholar Elaine Pagels writes in Why Religion? “When the author of the Gospel of Truth sets out to reveal Paul’s secret teaching, he begins by asking, What happened before the beginning of time? In answer, the author offers a primordial drama of creation, telling how, when ‘all beings’ began to search for the One from whom they came forth, they couldn’t find him. Feeling abandoned, not knowing where they came from, they suffered anguish and terror, like children wandering in the dark, searching in vain for their lost parents. 

"As this gospel tells it, what separates all beings, including ourselves, from God is not sin. Instead, what frustrates our longing to know our source is its transcendence, and our own limited capacity for understanding. Yet when these beings—or when we—realize that we can’t find our way home, don’t know where we came from, or how we got here, we feel utterly lost. Overwhelmed by grief and fear, we may rush into paths that lead nowhere, more lost than ever, imagining that there’s nothing beyond the confusion we see in the world around us.

“At this point, the Gospel of Truth turns toward a drama of cosmic redemption. When the Father sees his children terrified and suffering, ensnared by negative energies, he sends his Son, ‘the hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ,’ to show them a path and bring them back ‘into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infinite sweetness.’ And although, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, ignorant and violent ‘rulers of this world’ tortured and crucified Jesus, the Father overturned their conspiracy, transforming even their hideous crime into a means of grace.

“To show this, the Gospel of Truth reframes the vision of the cross from an instrument of torture into a new tree of knowledge. Here Jesus’s battered body, ‘nailed to a tree,’ is seen as fruit on a tree of ‘knowing the Father,’ which unlike that tree in Paradise, doesn’t bring death, but life, to those who eat from it. Thus, the author suggests that those who participate in the Eucharist, eating the bread and drinking the wine that, symbolically speaking, are Jesus’s flesh and blood, ‘discover him in themselves’ while he ‘discovers themselves in him.’

“After years of contending with familiar Jewish and Christian sources, I found here a vision that goes beyond what Paul calls ‘the message of the cross.’ Instead of seeing suffering as punishment, this gospel suggests that, seen through the eyes of wisdom, suffering can show how we’re connected with each other, and with God; what Paul’s letter to the Colossians calls ‘the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory. No wonder, then, that Christians called their sacred meal a mystery (mysterion), a Greek term later translated as ‘sacrament’ (from Latin sacramentum).”

“The author of the Gospel of Truth rejects images of God as a harsh, divine judge who sent Jesus into the world ‘to die for our sins.’ Instead, he suggests, the loving and compassionate Rather sent Jesus to find those who were lost, and to bring them back home. So rather than see the writing on the cross as any death sentence—whether Pilate’s or God’s—this author suggests instead that Jesus published there ‘the living book of the living,’ a book ‘written in our heart’ that teaches us who we really are, since it includes the names of everyone who belongs to God’s family.”

 

Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? (pp. 200-201). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

 

The transcendent realm of experience

Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern write: "The accounts we have of the mental processes of the dying can only give us a partial view, taking us up to the moment of death. The accounts given by those who return from an A/NDE [After Death Experience or Near Death Experience] have a higher definition and paradoxically seems to give a much clearer insight into the mental state of the dying as they start the journey. But despite these differences, the amazing similarity of accounts of the transcendent realm strongly supports the idea that there is one transcendent reality which, although accessed differently, is where the dying go.

"It is surely illogical to think of end of life visions and actual death experiences as isolated, entirely unrelated events. It makes more sense to regard them as part of a continuum, or as different views of the same event – the dying process. It is easy to spot the similarities between them. Both give a glimpse of a transcendent realm suffused with love and light, and both seem to eliminate any fear of death. The presence of dead relatives who seem to be there for a purpose is common to both experiences - to take you on your journey, in the case of an end of life experience, or in an ADE, to send you back, with the message that it was not your time to go. The relatives are all healed of any injury like lost limbs and they never age.

"There are obvious differences too. First, the feeling of being out of one’s body has not been reported in any of the end of life visions we have been told about, though it probably occurs in about a third of ADEs. Neither has anyone described a tunnel experience as part of an end of life vision. Instead, although the dying person sometimes describes being able to move into and out of another transcendent realm, only a movement towards rather than a real journey seems to be involved, just a feeling of going to and from with great ease. Perhaps it is the mental set of the dying which makes the tunnel experience less likely to occur. 

"The dying often spend some time on the edge of consciousness, and at some level at least may know that death is approaching; they are embedded in a psychological matrix of ongoing, a journey to elsewhere, in which the process of leaving may be prolonged. In the A/NDE the movement into the experience – sometimes through a tunnel – and the return, usually described as a ‘snapping back into the body’ are very precise and abrupt events. There is a clear beginning and a clear end. But the end of life experience is a one way journey only, guided and supported by those you have loved.

"How does this help with our understanding of life after death? The evidence we have would suggest that the domain after death has no location in physical space; subjective time is quite different, almost as if there is no time. But the domain is full of light and love. This would fulfill the concept of an entry into no time and no space but the memory of this area is always love and light.

 

“To Be And Not To Be. This is The Answer: Consciousness Survives,” essay for the 2021 Bigelow essay contest submitted by Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern.