This is from Dan’s Sic et Non blog on Patheos. He has been reading Sam Parnia’s book, Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death. He shares these passages about experiences that several people reported.
136: Ingrid, a fifty-year-old woman from Colombia with a PhD, described how, as a three-year-old child, she had fallen into a reservoir of water and was drowning. She had been in great distress, before feeling a sensation of being released. She said, “Then suddenly came a feeling of total relief. I didn’t know why then, but I was at peace and there was no anguish. My heart stopped pounding; everything turned absolutely still; I was no longer cold and didn’t feel like fighting anymore. My body simply became insubstantial… I noticed a body suspended in the water… This was my own lifeless body, but I was neither surprised nor frightened to recognize it. Instead, I felt an immense joy and freedom… So, I simply kept going away without ever looking back at that body.”
137: “Suddenly, I was above my body, which lay on a stretcher, wearing a white hospital gown. I looked at my body and knew it wasn’t the real me, it was the thing I had been caught inside, and now I was free! Oh and how I felt such happiness!”
137: “Suddenly… I felt totally liberated, I saw myself in a hospital gown, with the doctors around my body trying to resuscitate me. I saw how they were busily moving from one place to another, each time smaller and more distant… I floated alone. The relief was enormous. I couldn’t control that which had happened, I let go. Then, there began the most wonderful journey.”
138: “Suddenly it all happened so fast. I could see myself outside of my body. [I] was above my body floating around.” Stefania, a sixty-year-old Italian woman who had undergone heart surgery at the age of sixteen for congenital heart disease, unexpectedly suffered a complication in the postoperative period. While unconscious, she says, “I was no longer in my body. I floated without weight or physicality. I was above my body and directly below the ceiling of the intensive therapy room.” Someone else explained, “The first thing I experienced was that I could suddenly see my body from above. I saw that the doctors were incredibly busy treating me… I felt wonderful and light where I was. I had no pain and no problems… I clearly remember that I hovered over the doctor who conducted the treatment.”
138: People do not feel frightened or alarmed by seeing their own body in this state. Often, they find it intriguing to observe medical staff trying to save them. Stefania went on to explain, “I felt very good where I was now and was very surprised at the spectacle that was happening around the body which had belonged to me. I looked on with my whole being. I was having the experience from a state of consciousness which completely pervaded my being and I perceived everything from that vantage point. I ‘knew’ that the doctors were making a big deal to get me back from where I was. I ‘knew’ that other surgeons had arrived from other wards to help out, but I did not want to return from where I was.”
138-139: Another woman, Deborah, had been rendered unconscious after suffering complications, including severe blood loss, after a ruptured blood vessel in her abdomen. She explained, “All I know is that I was floating, upward for a while, then just forward and there was so much to look at… [I could] clearly see myself lying on a table surrounded by seven doctors. I was being operated on. The only part of me that could be seen was my closed eyes, some bangs and my heart feverishly being repaired.” Susan, an American woman who had suffered a cardiac arrest in 2013 after a severe allergic reaction, explained: “I saw the [medical] team enter and surround a person lying next to me; at least that was what I thought at the time. It never dawned on me that the other person was me. I was very, very calm. But I felt bad for the lady (me) as the code blue team [cardiac arrest emergency team] struggled to get her heart to start again. I saw ‘me’ being intubated [having a breathing tube being inserted] with chest compressions and the rotation of the team to revive me.”
139: Stefania recalled, “I, who no longer was the body that had belonged to me just a moment prior, found myself in a position which was… more elevated.” She continued, “As I was floating free without physical limitations, I experienced a feeling of infinite, supreme happiness. At the same time, I experienced an extremely alive and vigilant state of mind. I understood at a very deep level what was happening [to] the body that had belonged to me and was now intubated [had a breathing tube and was on a ventilator] on the hospital bed in intensive care. The thought was very lucid and came through immediate knowing. It was a different way of thinking… I recognized the body as mine but I was no longer interested: I was not that body. From this dimension, I observed everything that was happening and all the succeeding events without being involved.”
139: Krista further explained: “[ I] was now floating above my body. The distance between my conscious self and my body below seemed to be stretched out… There was no sound, no pain, and no fear… I could see someone lying on a bed… As I lingered above, I didn’t identify, in any way, with the body or the people in the room. I was instead a detached observer, although still ‘Krista’ within the fine static of my consciousness. I… felt more alive than ever.”
140: Karen recalled how she had suffered a ruptured appendix with gangrene and was bleeding so heavily during surgery that she suffered a cardiac arrest. She explained, “I looked down and saw my body with many people around it. I did not feel any attachment to my body or regret upon leaving it. I felt so light and free: free of the pain of the past several weeks and free of the pain of my life up to that point.” Wendy, a Canadian woman who suffered a cardiac arrest in 1982, explained, “[ I knew I] would be leaving behind a 5–6-month-old infant and my husband, but I did not care. [Because the magnetic pull was so powerfully strong that it overwhelmed even her powerful maternal instincts, and she found that she simply couldn’t resist rather than that she didn’t care.] I wanted to go into the light. I wanted to go home.”
