On Near Death and Out of Body Experiences! Part I
Death is believed to be a paradox which has not been understood till now. There have been recorded cases in which people have come to life after being declared clinically dead. No explanation has been found. Those who have come back into the sphere of life after seeing death so closely have described what they have seen. Most of the experiences have common characteristics. For example, most of the people who have had Near Death Experience have talked about seeing dark caves having a bright light at the end, or a spiral staircase having a bright light at the top. There have been reported incidents of NDEs in which people have described walking through dark tunnels invariably being attracted by an intensely incandescent bright light at the end of it. After accidents rendering people clinically dead, people have reported having such experiences.
People have described sensations of floating in the air free from their bodily bounds for some time, then of seeing bright lights attracting them. In the next moment they have experienced falling down and re-entering their bodies feeling pain and all bodily troubles, once again.
These experiences have been explained in many ways. While some people strongly believe that there is life after death and that death is not the ultimate end, there are skeptics who believe Near Death Experiences to be just hallucination created by our own brain when there is a lack of oxygen. Some others believe that such experiences are a part of dream sequences that are experienced by our brain in some kind of a pseudo-death state.
The near Death Experiences (NDEs) and the Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) are often confused with each other. In an OBE a person feels his conscious being, as a different entity from his body. People often have feelings of levitation and space travel. While the OBEs are limited to such experiences, the NDEs show a person, scenes from the higher realm which we often call heaven or hell. An astonishing fact about an NDE is that most people, who have gone through them, relate stories which have an uncanny similarity about them. Another fact that distinguishes OBEs are experienced when a person is in a high state of relaxation such as deep sleep but the NDEs take place when there is no consciousness left in a person and he has been proved or pronounced clinically dead.
In 1975 Dr. Raymond Moody wrote a book named “Life after Life” in which he has investigated about 150 cases of NDEs of people who had been pronounced dead, but came to life in an unbelievable manner. This book reinforces the fact that people have similar experiences during the NDEs. The reason behind this fact is unknown. Could it be that all of us really have to go to heaven or hell, after death? Or, could it be that there really is a higher abstract dimension after the planet Earth? The questions are unanswered yet.
There have been many well recorded accounts in history describing the NDEs that people have experienced. There is an account of a teenage girl who lived in Norfolk, England, in the 18th century and went into a 72 hour coma due to no apparent reason. People thought her to be dead and took her to be buried. This was the time when the girl named Sarah sat up and the people realized that she was alive and conscious again. When she recovered, she told people about what she had seen when she was unconscious. She told people that she had seen both heaven and hell and that people should be very careful in what they do in order to avoid the punishments of hell. Her descriptions of what she saw were such that they were not easily deniable.
Have you ever had an O.B.E.?
There is a reason behind her experiences being so convincing. Sarah told people that she would die again within a time of three days and so she did. There are many NDEs which have been explained by skeptics in a negating manner. They believe that people read about such things as NDEs, as well as listen to them so often that an impression is made in their subconscious, which takes the shapes of hallucinations when the brain works in deficiency of oxygen, or due to the release of endorphin hormone in the brain. But there have been numerous incidents of NDEs experienced by children especially those who never knew about their existence. This is a strong point in support of NDEs. Thus it is most vital that the scientists should play their role well and instead of fanatically refuting such occurrences, a serious scientific probe must be undertaken.
