The number of publications in serious academic magazines dedicated to the so -called near -death experience has grown significantly in recent years. Why science is increasingly trying to penetrate the territory traditionally considered the kingdom of mysticism?
The film “Heaven is Real” (“Heaven is for Real”) was released a little less than a year ago. And with a modest budget of $ 12 million, it raised more than $ 100 million at the box office. An even greater success came to the share of the book of the same name, according to which the film was placed. The story of a boy who survived the clinical death diverged with a total circulation of 10 million copies and for 4 years did not leave the lists of bestseller The New York Times. The three -year -old Kolton told his father, Todd Burpo (who wrote a book from his words) that he visited heaven, where he talked not only with God and angels, but also with his grandfather and sister. If we take into account that both the grandfather and sister died before the birth of Kolton, then the details given by the boy are very difficult to explain from a rational point of view.
Evidence of eyewitnesses
Of course, this is not the first story of this kind. Reports about experienced experience (English. Near Death Experience, Ned) have been known since the Middle Ages (and some researchers assure that even from antiquity). And the solid medical journal Resuscitation (“Resuscitation”) not so long ago published the first medical description of such a case, dating back to the XVIII century. And of course, with the release of the Books of Psychologist Raymond Moody in 1975, “Life after Life”, interest in this topic rose to a completely new level, and very many people began to talk about their “Travel”. As a result, today it is not at all necessary to experience a clinical death in order to know that the consciousness seems to be separated from the body and soars somewhere on top for some time, then it rushes into the frightening dark tunnel, at the end of which a
good and all-working lights are found, and individual lucky people are waitingalso meetings with deceased relatives and higher creatures.
Academic science refers to these stories with a fair skepticism. However, recently, serious scientists unexpectedly began to show much more interest in the phenomenon of near -death experience. By the beginning of this year, in the reviewed (that is, trustworthy, academic) scientific publications there were already 240 articles mentioning these experiences. Moreover, several authoritative scientists and doctors spoke about their own experience of this kind. So in 2012, the book of Mary Neal (Mary Neal) was published in heaven and vice versa ”(1), in which the author described what she felt when she went to the bottom, turning over when passing the threshold on a kayak. Mary Nile spent a long time under water and survived a complete cardiac arrest. Almost simultaneously, Iben Alexander’s book “Proof of Paradise” (2). Aleksander fell into a coma due to meningitis and also survived near -death experience. At the same time, both Neil and Alexander are very, very well -deserved doctors who could not help but understand how the publication of books on their reputation in the professional community would affect. Mary Nile, for example, headed the spinal surgery at the University of South California for several years, and the neurosurgeon Iben Alexander taught, among other things, at the Harvard University of Harvard School. However, the experience and awareness of its values turned out to be, obviously, more important than all other considerations.
Average score of near -death experience
Since 1981, an organization entitled “International Association of Credid Research” has been officially registered in the United States since 1981. It unites people who dared to take up the study of such a “non -browning” topic in academic circles, and those who themselves survived a similar experience. Journalist Gideon Lichfield, who prepared a large and detailed material about the possibilities and impossibly life after death for the April issue of The Atlantic (3), visited the annual Iands conference. He describes the event rather with well -restrained irony, however, maintaining objectivity, reports a lot of interesting things about the association itself and about its work.
For example, Iands adopted a scale of near -death experience, which is divided into 16 steps: a sense of mystical delight, exit from the body, movement along the tunnel, a sense of presence of supernatural creatures, and so on. Experience in each of the steps can be from 0 to 2 points, so the maximum experience is estimated at 32. The “average score” of those who report about the near -death experience is about 17.
Iands researchers report that people who returned from the threshold of death are subsequently experiencing very similar transformations. For example, they become more susceptible to the effects of light and sound, actively show love for their neighbors and nobility, often passing on the brink of wastefulness (which relatives and friends are not averse to use). They also begin to cope with the organization of their time and finance worse, but they gain a strange influence on electrical appliances. (During one of the Iands conferences in a large hotel where it took place, the computer system completely turned off. The participants in the event took this for granted.)
Show on the cornice
However, Iands archives have collected a lot of truly incredible evidence of mystical experience. Here, for example, is one of the most outstanding cases, known as the “case of Mary”-by the name of the immigrant worker. In 1977, she was taken to a hospital in Seattle, where doctors soon noted the patient’s heart arrest. Maria managed to save, and having come to her senses, she said that in a state of clinical death, her soul left her body and for some time was Vital under the ceiling of the operating room. Then she fluttered from the building, rising higher, – and noticed on the cornice of the third floor, the same time as a tennis shoe. Kimberly Clarp Kimberly nurse, hearing this story, went with a check and found a shoe exactly where the soul of Maria who left her body saw her and saw her. Moreover, the nurse was absolutely sure that it was impossible to see this shoe from the chamber of Mary, and Maria had no other opportunities to see her except when leaving her body.
Today Kimberly Clark Sharp is one of the Iands activists. However, the evidence of Maria herself would be much more interesting and important. Alas, shortly after discharge, she disappeared without a trace, and all attempts to find her did not give any result. In this sense, the story of the author and performer of his own songs Pam Reynolds may turn out to be more valuable for an objective researcher. In 1991, she discovered large aneurysm of one of the arteries of the brain. A complex and dangerous operation was required. The surgeon who was responsible for her decided on a risky (especially at that time) step – a hypothermal cardiac arrest. After the input of anesthesia, the heart of Reynolds was artificially stopped, and the body was cooled to about 15 degrees to avoid the death of the brain due to a lack of oxygen. At the same time, the patients inserted headphones into the ears of the patient, reproducing a rhythmic knock with a volume of 100 decibels, which is comparable to the noise of a gasoline lawn mower or a jack of a hammer. The calculation was very simple: if at least some part of the Reynolds brain remains active, it will react to the noise, which will be immediately displayed on an electroencephalogram.
But the patient’s encephalogram during the operation was some line of line. All the more further all further. Having recovered after a successful surgical intervention, Pam Reynolds said that she survived a way out of her own body and described in detail a lot of things that were happening in the operating room. The phrases that the doctors exchanged is the form of a surgical saw used to open the cranial box, and even the fact that some doctors listened to the stress to relieve the song “Hotel“ California ”.
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