Man, I though you was dead!

By Joe Walther

 

This week’s column is a continuation of last week’s, the part dealing with an afterlife. People have so overdone this topic. I’m not going to add to the tedium with more “yes there is, no there isn’t” nonsense. So, I’m going to be brief.

 

            I received an email from someone in Australia. It contained the following brief proclamation: “This stuff about a tunnel and a bright light and seeing angels, and dead relatives is a lot of crap. I’ve been dead 4 times and their ain’t nothing on the other side!” No one has ever accused me of being at a loss for words, but the cock-sureness of this statement stuns me. It also strikes me as astonishingly arrogant.

 

                        The volume of bonifide scientific affirmation concerning near death experiences speaks for itself. However, there seems to be at least two general kinds of experiences that come to the fore during post recovery interviews.

 

            The first is an exhilarating experience of calm while bathed in a bright white light. People who experience this type of sensation report out of body experiences that investigators are able to confirm. There is usually a tunnel with a bright light at its end. Sometimes there are relatives who have been dead for years. Overall, the experience is good and completely removes the fear of death. Conversely, the other experience is not so pleasant. It involves a dark, cold grayness, devoid of any kind of life. People, who have experienced this, remember it as a bad dream.

 

            Clinical death is reversible, without brain damage, when medical personnel successfully revive the patient in less than 5-minutes. A person can also be “dead” for longer periods if the body temperature is low enough, particularly the brain. In fact, a medical procedure I referred to last week, called hypothermic cardiac standstill (HCS), has kept patients “dead” for up to an hour, in order to repair brain aneurisms, before being revived.

 

            A young Swedish woman fell through an ice crack several years ago. She wedged between the water’s surface and a layer of ice with the back of her head below the surface of the freezing water. Her body temperature fell to such a low temperature that her heart stopped, as did all other metabolic processes. It took three hours to get her out of the water and another couple of hours to get her to a hospital. In all, she had been “dead” for seven hours.

 

            Doctors successfully revived her. Not only this, she suffered absolutely NO brain damage. Medically, the doctors attributed this to a case of suspended animation brought about by the freezing water. Not only did they successfully revive her, she is a practicing physician today. One of her colleagues is a doctor who worked on reviving her after she was “dead.”

 

            Near death experiences prove that there are near death experiences. They also prove the reversibility of clinical death. They do not prove that there is an afterlife. Legitimate science does not take an official stand on an afterlife. This does not preclude, however, some scientists from expressing personal beliefs.

 

            To the man who emailed me from Australia, I can only say that I have no idea whether there is an afterlife. If I had a vote on the matter, I’d certainly be all for it. But, since I don’t, admittedly, I lean more toward the nay side of the issue, but I’m open to scientific proof to the contrary. On the other hand, I’ve spoken to people who have undergone near death experiences.

 

            In fact, thirty-five years ago, I was present at the death of colleague. She was a young cancer victim, who had always voiced absolute fear at the thought of death. Her mother sat at her bedside crying. The woman opened her eyes and seemed to look through all of us at something in the doorway. She smiled and said, “It’s OK, mom. They are here to take me. I’ll be fine.” Her eyes rolled back and she died quietly and smiling.

 

            As I said, I don’t know if there is anything for us beyond death. The young woman—her name was Patty-Jo McCoffy, aged 24 years—saw something and she died serenely and without fear as a result. Even if there is nothing but eternal unconsciousness once that last brain synaptic firing fizzles to nothing, this is a neat way for nature to get us there. Doncha think?

 

            That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week, same time, and same channel. Have a great week. I hope you all get all the candy you want this Halloween!

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send