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Near-Death News

Have you had a cardiac arrest in the past 6 months? Do you know someone who has? Qualified individuals will participate in a doctoral dissertation study on the experience of surviving a cardiac arrest. If you are: age 40 - 95, a survivor of a cardiac arrest in the past 6 months, not currently hospitalized, please call John to find out more: (619) 948-4564 Qualified participants will receive a new Life-Style 2000 Activity Monitor and $25 compensation for their time. [Read more]

A child's near death experience enables her to perceive unseen dimensions and to interact with the dead ... I learned to fly to the ceiling turning flips in the ether like a trapeze artist. I looked down on my body as it lay sleeping. I stretched the perimeters of my room until it felt smooth to me. I let it curl in upon itself like a nautilus shell. I walked on my "nautilus shell" room leaving footprints as if it were wet sand. Then the room would quickly unwind, spinning me along with it until I ended up in the far corner of the ceiling. This dizzying ride was one of my favorite games. As time passed, I realized that I saw the world in a way that others didn't. I saw people and things that others could not see. I told my parents about these people and things. They patronizingly listened to my "stories," and then they smiled and assumed that I had imaginary friends and some outlandish ideas.  [Read more]

“By that time, I was completely in a coma,” he said, recalling that his stomach felt as hard as wood. The doctor had told his parents that David might or might not make it until the next morning. Stacy claims today, that he had slipped out of consciousness from the food poisoning and began an out-of-body experience that lasted until the third day, Easter Sunday and then came to. “It was like I was in the most beautiful place I had every been in my life,” he recalled. “I had no desire to come back." ... But what was most significant, Stacy indicated, was that the experience had changed his life. “I had a deep desire [after that] to seek after God's ways,” he explained.  [Read more]

Animal experts admitted yesterday they had no explanation for a spate of what appear to be canine suicides – all from the same spot. At least five dogs have jumped to their deaths from a bridge over a burn at Overtoun House in the past six months. In the most recent case, a woman out walking her dog watched in disbelief as her pet suddenly vaulted over the parapet and plunged 40 feet to its death. Joyce Stewart, a leading animal behaviourist ... said the pattern of deaths at the bridge was abnormal. She said: "Dogs are very able to gauge the heights and depths they can safely jump. Some people will say this is very spooky and would look for another reason. "I have never heard of a dog committing suicide. Often if they know they are going to die, they might go into hiding, but I have never heard of them actually taking their own lives. [Read more]

Using techniques he had learned in health class and from watching the Discovery Health channel, he cleared the moss from his grandfather's mouth and gave him two breaths on the steep bank. Then he ran. By the time he got back to the pond with his grandfather's friends, Watson had slid back into the water. Only his face was showing. They waited for paramedics. They prayed. Watson said he remembers watching his friends and grandson hover near his body. It was like an out-of-body experience, he said. [Read more]

After a near-death experience on Duxbury Beach in August 2002, Michael Carr has made sure the device that saved his life is available to as many Natick residents as possible. Since Carr suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and was revived with an automated external defibrillator (AED) two years ago, he is making it his personal mission to get these small machines into as many public buildings as possible. Carr and his family recently donated four defibrillators to the town's elementary schools that did not have one. Thanks to their generosity, Memorial, Bennett Hemenway, Brown and Johnson schools all are equipped with defibrillators. Now every public school in Natick is prepared in case a child or staff member experiences sudden cardiac arrest. [Read more]

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Her handset had received a text message from her dead husband ... Just before his death he had sent her an affectionate text message. Subsequently her daughter traveled to Mauritius to sort out his affairs and while there sent a text back to her mother. When it arrived, buried away in the daughter's own text was the loving message her husband had previously sent. The woman treasured this message but it had disappeared again a few days later when she switched the phone back on again. She was heart-broken, but then suddenly the exact same message arrived for a second time. It transpired the second message coincided with her daughter returning to England and switching her handset back on again. The [network] might have viewed the original text as unsent and delivered the message again. But how on earth the two messages got mixed up remains a mystery. [Read more]

Afterlife Telegrams, a non-profit making organization, asks those who wish to contact a dead relative or friend for a "donation" of $5 (£2.60) a word. The message is then memorized by a terminally ill volunteer who will endeavour to pass it on when he or she dies. The fee, depending on the wishes of the messenger, is then given to a relative, a charity or put towards the payment of medical bills. All the volunteers have a prognosis of survival for a year or less. If they live longer than a year, the fee is reimbursed and the telegram is "delivered" free. [Read more]

Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital has launched a website to provide terminally ill cancer patients with psychological support during their final days. Princess Margaret offers an integrated palliative care program that combines medical treatment with information for terminally ill patients and their families. Its website, Caring to the End of Life, is part of the initiative, which aims to integrate mind, body and soul. Death and dying are neglected areas in the field of medicine, noted Gary Rodin, a palliative care specialist who heads the program. Cancer care and medical treatments focus on cure for chronic disease, but doctors may not be trained to give adequate pain relief and emotional support, he said. [Read more]

A brief description of a typical case of the reincarnation type would show the following features:

According to an ongoing research by the National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (Nimhans) and University of Virginia, “reincarnation appears to be the best interpretation” of the claims of memories of previous lives “on the basis of the research evidence available across several cultures (in the East and West)”, said Head of Department of Clinical Psychology, Nimhans, Satwant Pasricha. “Reincarnation is a possibility with the data we have. However, there are still many questions that need to be answered,” said Dr. D Nagaraj, director, Nimhans. “The evidence so far suggests that reincarnation is worth a second look. There are fringe areas but the findings of researchers who have spent a lot of time on the subject cannot be rubbished,” said Dr. Chitaranjan Andrade, professor of psycho-pharmacology, Nimhans. Nimhans and University of Virginia are the only universities in the world working on the subject so far. Dr. Pasricha has investigated and participated in about 500 cases of children (referred as subjects) since 1973 who “claim” to remember previous lives. [Read more]

Peter Teekamp is an artist and near-death experiencer living in Washington state who accidentally discovered a drawing that might be worth millions. He believes the drawing to be an original artwork by the famous 19th century post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. He discovered the drawing hanging on the wall of a restaurant which he visited by pure chance. Coincidentally, Teekamp happened to be writing a book about Gauguin at the time. Having studied Gauguin for many years, Teekamp knew a Gauguin when he saw one. Eventually he bought the drawing from its owner for $5,000. After further examination and an ugly court battle with its previous owner, Teekamp gathered evidence to support the claim that it is indeed an original Gauguin. Forensic experts are needed to prove the age of the drawing and examine the evidence. The concept for a documentary or reality-based follow-up is being considered. The Wildenstein Institute in Paris is the leading authority on the works of Gauguin and have been contacted for their analysis. [Read more]

How religious you are as an adult depends at least partly on your genes, a study of twins suggests. Past studies have found that children tend to mirror the religious beliefs and behaviour of their parents. Now a team led by Laura Koenig at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis has shown that the influence of environmental factors wanes in adulthood, while genetic factors become more important in determining how religious a person is. The team asked 169 pairs of identical twins and 104 pairs of fraternal twins born in Minnesota, all male and in their early 30s, how often they and their family went to religious services, prayed and discussed religious teachings compared with when they were growing up. While the identical twins' behaviour remained similar in adulthood, greater differences emerged between fraternal twins as they aged (Journal of Personality, vol 73, p 471). [Read more]

Dr. Claude Swanson was educated as a physicist at MIT and Princeton University ... His principal interest has been unified field theory, the so-called "Theory of Everything" which could explain the universe at the deepest possible level. This has led him to investigate many aspects of the paranormal, which appear to be completely real phenomena which violate our present science ... At the same time, thousands of out-of-body and near-death experiences show that other dimensions and other realities do exist. This has been the domain of speculation by theoretical physics, but OBE and NDE cases indicate that parallel realities and dimensions are in some sense real. And finally, paranormal research suggests that the human soul, the center of human consciousness, can survive death and is apparently an energy form which can move and exist independently of the body. Science is discovering that, in the words of the pioneer Robert Monroe, " we are far more than our physical bodies." [Read more]

More and more research is coming out related to the mind-body connection, and some investigators have come to the conclusion that the mind is simply not confined within the brain, that the brain is a vehicle for the mind, and not the source of the mind. So phenomena like out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences and so on can only be explained if we expand our understanding of the mind. The relationship of the mind and the brain is like the relationship between electricity and a battery. [Read more]

You've heard of telepathy -- it's when you can communicate with someone just by thinking about it. Now, a researcher in Seattle says her studies show that, at least for some people, it works. Leanna Standish, ND, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Bastyr University in Seattle, calls the phenomenon "distant neural signaling." She agrees it sounds kind of whacky, and she can't explain why it works with some people and not others, but after several experiments, she's convinced the phenomenon is real. In one study, Standish recruited 30 pairs of volunteers who knew each other and in some cases were related. [Read more]

A paralyzed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralyzed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone. The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home. [Read more]

Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to approach them. Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off. The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future, based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit the redwoods of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival for millenniums - a journey that, for some trees, precedes the Parthenon. [Read more]

For decades, Dr. Thaler has been a pioneer in the area of artificial intelligence. Beginning with some very highly unorthodox theoretical physics experiments in 1975, he embarked upon what many AI onlookers, such as NASA, have called AI's best bet at creating human to trans-human level intelligence in machines. In these initial, strictly curiosity-driven investigations, he built, trained, and then destroyed artificial neural networks and discovered that all of the key features of the core near-death experience were duplicated within these destruction sequences. Most importantly, he observed that within their last gasps, expiring neural networks produced coherent and often useful new ideas. After very careful experimentation, he discerned those levels of damage producing the highest turnover of such novel concepts and then attached another neural network to automatically mine for the best of these emerging ideas. In so doing, he produced an invention called the "Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information," or what the attentive public came to know as the "Creativity Machine Paradigm." [Read more]

"Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," Mr. Felos said in an afternoon news conference. "This death was not for the siblings, and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri." ... It drew religious conservatives and abortion opponents who took up the Schindlers' cause, saying no life should end prematurely. And just as the case of Karen Ann Quinlan prompted a debate nearly 30 years ago over the "right to die," the Schiavo case seemed to focus as much on the "right to live." ... The Vatican issued a statement calling Ms. Schiavo's death a "violation of the sacred nature of life" that had "shocked consciences." [Read more]

The ethical dilemma: The debate over euthanasia is significant, but it is not new. To frame this debate, there are several distinctions that one ought to make. The first is between active and passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia involves withdrawing treatment from a patient causing that patient to die, while passive euthanasia involves withholding potentially lifesaving treatment from the outset. In essence, it's the difference between killing someone and allowing someone to die. Regardless, if the patient is better off dead, then the patient is better off dead. How he or she gets to that point seems peripheral. The second distinction - between voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia - is more important. Voluntary euthanasia occurs at the informed request of a competent patient, while non-voluntary euthanasia involves a patient who is not competent to give consent. [Read more]

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  Bush Signed Right-to-Die Law in Texas

  Bush's 'Blind' Justice in Texas Executions

  Tom DeLay Let Brain-Damaged Father Die

Sheila Mclean argues if we are to permit doctors to assist death, then we owe it to the patient, family and healthcare professionals to decide what is the most dignified and ethical way to help the patient die ... There are, therefore, two issues raised by cases of this sort. The first is whether or not it is ever right to allow someone to die. The second relates to the method of bringing about the death – would it be more ethical to end the patient's life by way, for example, of a lethal injection rather than removing the essentials of life and causing a slow, arguably undignified, death? The realities of modern life require a principled response to these difficult questions. [Read more]

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The Pope had refused to go back to the hospital, when his health began to seriously deteriorate, and perhaps prolong his life with the latest artificial life support system ~ all of which were available to him ~ but, instead, he chose to welcome his death and, in the process, teach us his greatest lesson ... Elizabeth Kübler Ross is correct when she writes, " Death may be viewed as the curtain between the existence we are conscious of and one that is hidden from us until we raise the curtain." We can raise the curtain now if we stop being controlled by fear and begin to trust and express our deepest feelings ~ especially love and our deepest urge to unite and cooperate with one another. And yes, that was, in essence, the last message of Pope John Paul II. [Read more]

All who care about the pope, who chose not to be returned to a hospital, have reason to be thankful that he simply died. At the hospital, who knows? Could doctors have used some desperate measure to stabilize him in some near-death state, and kept him there for hours or days or weeks, maybe even years, with or without his awareness? Imagine how much worse, how pointlessly unaccepting of death, that could have been. Imagine if he had fallen into a condition like the one Terri Schiavo suffered, with the pope's body stabilized but his higher brain function gone. Some brave cardinal could have eased a lot of people's confusion by better studying the medical evidence in Terri Schiavo's case. Such a cardinal could have said, months ago, that there was no hope in her case, either. No hope, I mean, that conscious human life would return to her body, because her cerebral cortex, which had been destroyed and largely replaced by spinal fluid, could not regrow. [Read more]

The pope has for years insisted that the most elemental biological definition of the body's existence is, in fact, life. He argues to preserve a zygote as a human being at the beginning of the human process and the body, devoid of spirit, at its end. He has chosen to combat contraception, abortion and euthanasia in such a way as to make life, as he understands it, the ultimate good. No situation, no medical condition can justify modifying his absolute interpretation. That is simplistic thinking in the face of terribly complex issues ... Still, a clutch of politicians has recently joined the pope in insisting that even the questionable biological functioning of a body is life and that nothing should threaten it ... The life of a human being is precious, unique, to be preserved and honored. The artificially continued existence of a body without that life is medical manipulation. [Read more]

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In this section of the newsletter, P.M.H. Atwater will answer questions submitted to her from subscribers to this newsletter. Atwater's contribution to near-death studies is considered to be one of the most important as her first two books, Beyond the Light and Coming Back to Life, are considered to be the "Bibles" of the NDE by researchers and enthusiasts. Her latest books are entitled We Live Forever: The Real Truth About Death and The New Children and Near-Death Experiences. If you have a question which you would like her to answer for this column, just email your question to Kevin Williams at http://www.near-death.com/contact.html for consideration. For more information about P.M.H. Atwater's contribution to near-death studies, download her press kit here.

QUESTION:  "I had all the beautiful usual 'symptoms' and the continuing absolute awareness of 'truth,' but I also had one I've never seen retold. When I was back in my body after the emergency Caesarean, in which I stopped breathing for 45 minutes and was stone cold gone, when I came back, for weeks my body felt like someone had draped a heavy skeleton over me. I was hunched over with the weight of it and had to learn to move with it again. I shuffled rather than walked, turned like a robot rather than a human. Every joint was sooooooooo hard to manipulate and it seemed like such a complicated process. To get a wrist to move in order to work fingers was such a conscious effort and they creaked and grated, bone against bone, very unpleasant but not painful. It was like my mind was processing the movement of bone, sinew, tissue, muscle, joints - literally as if someone had draped a body over me and I had to figure out how to work it, like a puppeteer being inside a mannequin. It felt very cumbersome and very unevolved. My initial delight years after when I discovered other people had experienced the tunnel and the light of pure love, has always niggled that no one else seems to report this dysfunction of the body and soul on rejoining. It's funny, even though I had had a Caesarean, it didn't seem to be that area that grated. Moving a finger was a slightly comical process. My story is, of course, much bigger, but I wonder if you've ever heard of this strange misfit approach on reintegration?" -- Jenny

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In her new book, "More Than Meets the Eye," Yvonne Perry address topics that many people are not comfortable talking about - such as suicide, the near-death experience, end of life decisions, grief and other emotions regarding the passing of a loved one. Her chapter on euthanasia comes from her own experience with her beloved uncle who was kept alive on machines against his will for almost a year. In the chapter entitled, “Let Go of my Toe” she gives a heart-rending account of her uncle's plight and his spirit visits to her in his final days. Imagine her surprise when a year after his death she encountered his spirit at a 7-11 store smoking a cigarette and drinking Coke! [Read more]

The author is an NDE skeptic and an anesthesiologist with more than twenty years of hospital experience, Dr. Woerlee has been struck over the years by the similarities between the body's symptoms under anesthesia and its reactions near death. Among the issues he addresses are the sensations of being disembodied that those near death often describe, the perception that mind and body are separate components of existence, whether there is such a thing as a soul, the physical effects of decreased oxygen to the brain, and the visions that the dying sometimes report, from rapturous experiences of eternal peace to diabolical dreams. [Read more]

Open a psychic doorway to the spirit world ... That's exactly what happened to Paul Elder following a NDE at the age of 41 - a psychic doorway opened and his ordinary life has never been the same. Except that Paul Elde