Dr. Sam Parnia, a doctor at Southampton General Hospital in
England, has been given approval to conduct the first large
scale investigation into what happens when patients have a
near death experience (NDE).
An earlier study at the hospital revealed that a small number
of patients who suffered a cardiac arrest and survived
reported some kind of unusual experience while they were
clinically brain dead. These ranged from walking down a
tunnel towards a bright light to seeing spinning gargoyles. In
addition, an opinion poll of 1,000 people found that one in 10
people said they?d had an out of body experience.
Patrick Tierney?s case is one that will be examined by the
study. His heart stopped ten years ago, and he can?t
remember how long the cardiac arrest lasted. But he vividly
remembers what happened while he was unconscious. ?I felt
what was like a pinch in the chest and the next minute, I was
in a tunnel similar to a medieval house. It had wooden panels,
very, very dark. I floated or walked down the tunnel, [then]
moved into another tunnel - it wasn?t very long - and I stood
there and I saw a huge mass of color. It could of been a
garden, it could have just been color, but it was beautiful,
one of the most wonderful things I?ve ever seen.?
Like many people who believe they?ve had a near death
experience, Teirney told no one about it over the years, for
fear they would make fun of him. ?They?d laugh at you, they?d
think you were making it up. I think I was dying and for some
reason my time hadn?t come, my name had been wiped out of
the books and I was sent back,? he says.
Dr. Parnia studied sixty-three patients who were resuscitated
after cardiac arrests in the casualty department of his
hospital. All were clinically dead when the medical staff tried
to get their hearts started again. They weren?t breathing,
had no heartbeat and there appeared to be no brain activity.
Four of these patients reported vivid, abnormal experiences,
journeys down tunnels, or encounters with dead relatives.
None of them was particularly religious or had a history of
psychiatric problems. The drugs administered during
resuscitation could not have caused the unusual events they
recalled.
Parnia says, ?There are some of those people who are able to
recall specific details of the resuscitation attempts, so in
other words, a form of consciousness has had to have been
present for them to come back and tell us what was
happening to them. This may therefore imply that the mind is
a separate entity to the brain.?
He is now looking for funding for a much wider study involving
25 hospitals. He says, ?We know very little about the dying
process scientifically and therefore, how can we make
decisions about euthanasia scientifically when we don?t know
about the science behind it??
Patient Dennis Cobell says, ?I suppose a lot of us would like
to think that life might continue and if you have lost a loved
one perhaps you would like the idea that you were going to
meet up with that person again. But I don?t think this
research is going to be any proof of life after death.?
To learn about one of the most amazing near-death
experiences ever recorded,click here.
For more information, click here.
