THE NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE - NDE

I was admitted to the hospital with heart trouble. The next morning, lying in the hospital bed, I began to have a very severe pain in my chest. I pushed the button beside the bed to call for the nurses, and they came in and started working on me. I was quite uncomfortable lying on my back so I turned over, and as I did I quit breathing and my heart stopped beating. Just then I heard the nurses shout "Code pink! Code pink!" As they were saying this, I could feel myself moving out of my body and sliding down between the mattress and the rail on the side of the - actually it seemed as if I went through the rail - on down to the floor. Then I started rising upward, slowly. On may way up I saw more nurses come running into the room - there must have been a dozen of them. I drifted on up past the light fixture - I saw it from the side and very distinctly - and then I stopped, floating right below the ceiling, looking down. I felt almost as though I were a piece of paper that someone had blown up to the ceiling.

I watched them reviving me from up there! My body was lying down there stretched out in plain view, and they were all standing around it. I heard one nurse say, "Oh, my God! She‘s gone!", while another leaned down to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I was looking at the back of her head while she did this. I‘ll never forget the way her hair looked; it was cut kind of short. Just then I saw them roll this machine in there, and they put the shocks on my chest. As I saw them below beating on my chest and rubbing my arms and legs, I thought,"Why are they going to so much trouble? I‘m just fine now."

It was about two years ago, and I had just turned nineteen. I was driving a friend of mine home in my car, and as I got to this particular intersection downtown, I stopped and looked both ways, but I didn‘t see a thing coming. I pulled on out into the intersection and as I did I heard my friend yell at the top of his voice. When I looked I saw a blinding light, the headlights of a car that was speeding towards us. I heard this awful sound - the side of the car being crushed in - and there was just an instant during which I seemed to be going through a darkness, an enclosed space. It was very quick. Then, I was sort of floating about five feet above the street, about five yards away from the car, I‘d say, and I heard the echo of the crash dying away. I saw people come running up and crowding around the car, and I saw my friend get out of the car, obviously in shock. I could see my own body in the wreckage among all those people, and could see them trying to get it out. My legs were all twisted and there was blood all over the place.

People were walking up from all directions to get to the wreck. I could see them, and I was in the middle of a very narrow walkway. Anyway, as they came by me they wouldn‘t seem to notice me. They would just keep walking with their eyes straight ahead. As they came real close, I would try to turn around, to get out of their way, but they would just walk through me.

I got a new bike for my birthday. The day after my birthday, I was riding the bike and I didn‘t see a car coming and it hit me. I don‘t remember getting hit but suddenly I was looking down at myself. I saw my body under the bike and my leg was broken and bleeding. I remember looking and seeing my eyes closed. I was above.

I was floating about five feet above my body and there were people all around. A man in the crowd tried to help me. An ambulance came. I wondered why the people were worried because I was fine. I watched them put my body in the ambulance and I was trying to tell them I was fine but none of them could hear me. The ambulance drove off and I tried to follow it. I was above the ambulance following it. I thought I was dead. I looked around and then I was in a tunnel with a bright light at the end.

There were a lot of people in the light but I didn‘t know any of them. I told them about the accident and they said I had to go back. They said it wasn‘t my time to die yet so I had to go back to my father and mother and sister. I went back through the tunnel where I ended up back in the hospital where two doctors were working on me. I saw my body on this table and it looked blue. One doctor put paddles on my chest and my body bounced up. When I woke up I told the doctor I saw him put the paddles on my chest. I tried to tell my mother to, but no one wanted to hear.

Compare the above NDE descriptions with the following from the 8th century text The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

He is surprised to find himself out of his physical body. He sees and hears his relatives and friends mourning over his body and preparing it for the funeral and yet when he tries to respond to them they neither hear or see him. He does not yet realise that he is dead, and he is confused. He asks himself whether he is dead or not, and, when he finally realises that he is, wonders where he should go or what he should do. A great regret comes over him, and he is depressed about his state. For a while he remains near the places with which he has been familiar while in physical life.

He notices that he is still in a body - called a "shining" body - which does not appear to consist of material substance. Thus, he can go through rocks, walls and even mountains without encountering any resistance. Travel is almost instantaneous. Wherever he wishes to be he arrives there in a moment. His thought and perception are less limited; his mind becomes very lucid and his senses seem more keen and more perfect and closer in nature to the divine. If he has been in physical life blind or deaf or crippled, he is surprised to find that in his "shining" body all of his senses, as well as all the powers of his physical body, have been restored and intensified. He may encounter other beings in the same kind of body, and may meet what is called a clear or pure light.