home

shop · help · contact · search

September 28, 1999

Death, a poet wrote "is an end to it. And that's just that." And most certainly think of death as a one-way trip. But some people claim they've been there and back. And they have a lot to say about what they saw. our always curious Tom Alderman met some of them. Here's "Alderman's Eye" on Life After Death.

	"I had my experience during open heart surgery."
	"I can remember thinking, oh shit, I'm dead."
	"I went out of my body."
	"Whooshing down through the black tunnel."

TOM ALDERMAN: For those of you who've ever wondered what it's like to die, here's the word from those who've actually done it -- and lived to tell about it. .

	"I was in the presence of this beautiful light."
	"I became part of that beautiful white light."
	"The communication was telepathic."
	"We didn't have to use our voice."
	"I was completely surrounded in love."
	"Love just came through every part of my body."
	"I felt totally loved. I felt at home."
	"This is so awesome. I want to stay here forever."

ALDERMAN:  Sounds a little like Bermuda. But at the last moment, they weren't allowed in. Damn Advised to come back another time when they've got guaranteed reservations.

	"Definitely not scared of dying. I look forward to it."
	"I'm not afraid of dying as a result of this."
	"It's the best thing that can happen."
	"There's nothing to be afraid of."

ALDERMAN:  All this time you've probably felt that death is a fate worse than life. Something you'd prefer not to have to go through. But we have it on good authority from those who've been there and done that. Those who've been this close to death that it's not such a bad deal after all. Many of those who've had what they call a near death experience got together in Vancouver recently to swap war stories about their little visits to the sweet hereafter. And to assure the rest of us that though death may not be a barrel of laughs, it's not entirely unenjoyable. You should try it some time.

ALDERMAN:  A gathering of those from around the world who have tried it. A brush with death usually as the result of an accident and are trying to make some sense of what befell them.

LECTURER:  What you're left with is very clear, lucid, spiritual consciousness.

ALDERMAN:  They're also trying to promote a little respectability for the near death community. 'Til recently most of these folks were gun-shy of talking about what they think happened to them because they'd be razzed to death by friends, foes and mainly by science which regards this stuff as hilariously new-agey.

ALDERMAN:  The nay-sayers don't doubt the story-tellers' sincerity but they say it's all probably a hallucination. And until he came face to face with death, Vancouver's Chris Lovelidge would have agreed with them. Then he ate a bad shrimp and caught ptomaine. It was iffy for a while there.

CHRIS LOVELIDGE / NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE:  I was a skeptic. I was a materialist. I always thought that there was a scientific explanation for this. For everything um and um, if you couldn't explain it then perhaps it didn't exist.

ALDERMAN:  Lovelidge insists his peek into that other world has changed him. No longer a money-grubber. Now he goes forth and does good deeds.

LOVELIDGE:  The accumulation of material things is really not important.

ALDERMAN:  Now how did your wife take all this the new. The new Chris Lovelidge?

LOVELIDGE:  Um, she was surprised. And there were occasions when she was not happy.

ALDERMAN:  I'll bet. A break from talk of white lights and lectures entitled "I'm not crazy -- I just died." Here at the convention's exhibition hall, devotees can inspect gewgaws, literature and assorted chachkas of the near death trade of which the most popular are the paintings of Vancouver's Orlea Rayne.

ORLEA RAYNE / NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE:  This is my own spiritual portrait -- or soul portrait as it's called.

ALDERMAN:  Orlea had her brush with death when she was Irene Alderson and came back a newly minted artist with an exotic new name, specializing in portraits of that wonderful other world. Some go for 500 dollars and up

RAYNE:  See this image as quite feminine. And I was a very masculine person before and I wore suits and I really behaved much more male-like. And I came back. I sold my clothes. I changed my furniture. My husband divorced me because he said I was a different person. My whole life changed. We are a spiritual being and this is just a space suit that we put on for a short time and we can pop in and out and we go out into another dimension. We come back into this body and it's.

RAYNE:  It's weird. I know it's weird. I know it's really weird. And it's really weird for me some days. It's so weird for me I can't believe myself some days. I kind of understand because I would have thought that way a few years ago myself. I would have thought 'she's just a hoax'. 'I don't believe her'.

ALDERMAN:  And kind of goofy.

RAYNE:  And kind of goofy. And real goofy, not kind of real goofy. That's how I'd a saw myself.

ALDERMAN:  Anyway, it doesn't bother you any more?

RAYNE:  No, it doesn't bother me.

ALDERMAN:  It must have bothered you to start with surely?

RAYNE: I didn't tell anybody. You think I'm crazy? (Laughs)

Dr. YVONNE KASON / NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE:  And we all know it's not everybody. Not everybody that has a brush with death has a mystical or paranormal experience with it. Some people have nothing.

ALDERMAN:  Happily for the experiencers, there's a more credible champion of the near death movement. Dr. Yvonne Kason, a real doctor, University of Toronto professor and author of a book about her own near death experience in a plane crash.

KASON:  It's a beautiful experience. It's like being afraid of sex and then having an orgasm for the first time. You discover. 'Wow. This is wonderful Why was I afraid of this to begin with?'

ALDERMAN:  Enter the killjoy. Vancouver's Dale Beyerstein, philosophy professor and a member of an international association of skeptics, alert to what it regards as the creeping scourge of bad science.

DALE BEYERSTEIN / SKEPTIC:  I'm a diabetic and I've had insulin reactions. And so I've had the tunneling of vision. I've had an out of body experience once. I've had a kind of feeling of oneness with the universe and so on. But I just give a different explanation to what's going on from what they do.

ALDERMAN:  Spoilsport Beyerstein says it's all a chemical imbalance in the brain.

BEYERSTEIN:  When you're in that very, very bad position where your brain is just about ready to shut down, you don't have much fuel to do very much. And so what do you do? You just kind of take your perceptions as they come to you. You don't make judgments about them. You don't have the energy to be critical of them. It all seems very, very nice.

KASON:  The biological theories just don't pan out because it can't be a dying brain phenomenon. People have similar experiences when they're not near death. People have had full blown near death experiences when they think they're going to die.

BEYERSTEIN:  Well you know it's not very comforting to believe that when you're dead you're dead. And if you have any sort of evidence that would allow you to continue with the belief that you're going to be able to survive, well that's. That's a really nice thing to have. And it's not surprising that people who don't want to think terribly critically of the evidence like to leap to that hypothesis.

ALDERMAN:  Nonsense, says the artist formerly known as Irene. If only all those who had a near death experience would just admit it without shame, force of numbers would compel skeptics to reexamine their frivolous thesis. Come on out of the closet now.

RAYNE:  There's hundreds of people around who need somebody like me who they can talk to so they know they're not crazy. I know I'm not crazy and I know they're not crazy. And they talk to me. Like they end up just meeting me on the beach or meeting in the coffee shop and they start talking to me. And as soon as they find out I'm a little weird, they're able to have somebody to talk to. And I use the word weird and weird's okay. Weird is good.

ALDERMAN:  So if you ever see something like this, don't worry it may not be the end of the world after all.

	"But the experience itself is a pretty glorious experience."
	"Death itself is a big, big liberation."
	"It's a very joyful place."

ALDERMAN:  You could easily be bounced back to us down here and get to tell your story to next year's convention of the International Association of Near Death Studies where death is not necessarily a dirty word. I'm Tom Alderman.