Is there life after death? Probably every person has asked this question at least once in their life. And this is quite obvious, because the unknown scares us the most.
The sacred scriptures of all religions without exception say that the human soul is immortal. Life after death is presented either as something wonderful, or, on the contrary, something terrible in the image of Hell. According to Eastern religion, the human soul undergoes reincarnation - it moves from one material shell to another.
However, modern people are not ready to accept this truth. Everything requires proof. There is a discourse about various forms of life after death. A large amount of scientific and fiction literature has been written, many films have been made, which provide a lot of evidence of the existence of life after death.
We present to your attention 12 real proofs of the existence of life after death.
In medicine, the fact of death is declared when the heart stops and the body does not breathe. Clinical death occurs. From this condition the patient can sometimes be brought back to life. True, a few minutes after blood circulation stops, irreversible changes occur in the human brain, and this means the end of earthly existence. But sometimes after death some fragments of the physical body seem to continue to live.
For example, in Southeast Asia there are mummies of monks whose nails and hair grow, and the energy field around the body is many times higher than the norm for an ordinary living person. And perhaps they still have something else alive that cannot be measured by medical devices.
2: Forgotten tennis shoe
Many patients who have experienced clinical death describe their sensations as a bright flash, a light at the end of a tunnel, or vice versa - a gloomy and dark room with no way to get out.
An amazing story happened to a young woman, Maria, an emigrant from Latin America, who, in a state of clinical death, seemed to leave her room. She noticed a tennis shoe forgotten by someone on the stairs and, having regained consciousness, told the nurse about it. One can only try to imagine the state of the nurse who found the shoe in the indicated place.
3: Polka Dot Dress and Broken Cup
This story was told by a professor, doctor of medical sciences. His patient's heart stopped during surgery. The doctors managed to get him started. When the professor visited a woman in intensive care, she told an interesting, almost fantastic story. At some point, she saw herself on the operating table and, horrified by the thought that, having died, she would not have time to say goodbye to her daughter and mother, she was miraculously transported to her home. She saw a mother, daughter and a neighbor who came to see them and brought the baby a dress with polka dots.
And then the cup broke and the neighbor said that it was luck and the girl’s mother would recover. When the professor came to visit the young woman’s relatives, it turned out that during the operation a neighbor had actually visited them, who had brought a dress with polka dots, and the cup had broken... Fortunately!
4: Return from Hell
The famous cardiologist, professor at the University of Tennessee, Moritz Rowling, told an interesting story. The scientist, who many times brought patients out of a state of clinical death, was, first of all, a person very indifferent to religion. Until 1977.
This year an incident occurred that forced him to change his attitude towards human life, soul, death and eternity. Moritz Rawlings carried out resuscitation actions, which are not uncommon in his practice, on a young man by means of chest compressions. His patient, as soon as consciousness returned to him for a few moments, begged the doctor not to stop.
When he was brought back to life, and the doctor asked what scared him so much, the excited patient replied that he was in hell! And when the doctor stopped, he returned there again and again. At the same time, his face expressed panic horror. As it turns out, there are many such cases in international practice. And this, undoubtedly, makes us think that death only means the death of the body, but not the personality.
Many people who have experienced a state of clinical death describe it as an encounter with something bright and beautiful, but the number of people who have seen lakes of fire and terrible monsters is no less. Skeptics claim that this is nothing more than hallucinations caused by chemical reactions in the human body as a result of oxygen starvation of the brain. Everyone has their own opinion. Everyone believes what they want to believe.
But what about ghosts? There are a huge number of photographs and videos that allegedly contain ghosts. Some call it a shadow or a film defect, while others firmly believe in the presence of spirits. It is believed that the ghost of the deceased returns to earth to complete unfinished business, to help solve the mystery, to find peace and tranquility. Some historical facts provide possible evidence for this theory.
5: Napoleon's signature
In 1821. After the death of Napoleon, King Louis XVIII was installed on the French throne. One day, lying in bed, he could not sleep for a long time, thinking about the fate that befell the emperor. The candles burned dimly. On the table lay the crown of the French state and the marriage contract of Marshal Marmont, which Napoleon was supposed to sign.
But military events prevented this. And this paper lies in front of the monarch. The clock on the Church of Our Lady struck midnight. The bedroom door opened, although it was bolted from the inside, and... Napoleon entered the room! He walked up to the table, put on the crown and took the pen in his hand. At that moment, Louis lost consciousness, and when he came to his senses, it was already morning. The door remained closed, and on the table lay a contract signed by the emperor. The handwriting was recognized as genuine, and the document was in the royal archives as early as 1847.
6: Boundless love for mother
The literature describes another fact of the appearance of the ghost of Napoleon to his mother, on that day, May 5, 1821, when he died far from her in captivity. In the evening of that day, the son appeared before his mother in a robe that covered his face, and an icy cold wafted from him. He said only: “May the fifth, eight hundred and twenty-one, today.” And left the room. Only two months later the poor woman learned that it was on this day that her son died. He could not help but say goodbye to the only woman who was his support in difficult times.
7: The Ghost of Michael Jackson
In 2009, a film crew went to the ranch of the late King of Pop Michael Jackson to film footage for the Larry King program. During filming, a certain shadow came into the frame, very reminiscent of the artist himself. This video went live and immediately caused a strong reaction among the singer’s fans, who could not cope with the death of their beloved star. They are sure that Jackson's ghost still appears in his house. What it really was remains a mystery to this day.
8: Birthmark Transfer
Several Asian countries have a tradition of marking a person's body after death. His relatives hope that in this way the soul of the deceased will be reborn again in his own family, and those same marks will appear in the form of birthmarks on the bodies of children. This happened to a boy from Myanmar, the location of a birthmark on his body exactly coincided with the mark on the body of his deceased grandfather.
9: Revived handwriting
This is the story of a little Indian boy, Taranjit Sinngha, who at the age of two began to claim that his name was different, and he used to live in another village, the name of which he could not know, but he called it correctly, like his past name. When he was six years old, the boy was able to remember the circumstances of “his” death. On his way to school, he was hit by a man riding a scooter.
Taranjit claimed that he was a ninth grade student and that day he had 30 rupees with him and his notebooks and books were soaked in blood. The story of the tragic death of the child was completely confirmed, and the handwriting samples of the deceased boy and Taranjit were almost identical.
10: Innate knowledge of a foreign language
The story of a 37-year-old American woman, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, is interesting because, under the influence of regressive hypnosis, she began to speak pure Swedish, considering herself a Swedish peasant.
The question arises: Why can’t everyone remember their “former” life? And is it necessary? There is no single answer to the eternal question about the existence of life after death, and there cannot be.
11: Testimonies of people who experienced clinical death
This evidence is, of course, subjective and controversial. It is often difficult to assess the meaning of statements such as “I was separated from my body,” “I saw a bright light,” “I flew into a long tunnel,” or “I was accompanied by an angel.” It is difficult to know how to respond to those who say that in a state of clinical death they temporarily saw heaven or hell. But we know for sure that the statistics of such cases are very high. The general conclusion about them is the following: approaching death, many people felt that they were coming not to the end of existence, but to the beginning of some new life.
12: Resurrection of Christ
The strongest evidence for the existence of life after death is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even in the Old Testament, it was predicted that the Messiah would come to Earth, who would save His people from sin and eternal destruction (Isa. 53; Dan. 9:26). This is exactly what Jesus' followers testify that He did. He voluntarily died at the hands of the executioners, “was buried by a rich man,” and three days later left the empty tomb in which he lay.
According to witnesses, they saw not only the empty tomb, but also the resurrected Christ, who appeared to hundreds of people over 40 days, after which he ascended to heaven.
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The leading designer of the Impulse Design Bureau, Vladimir Efremov, died suddenly. He started coughing, sank onto the sofa and fell silent...
At first the relatives did not understand that something terrible had happened. They thought that he had sat down to rest. Natalya was the first to come out of her stupor. She touched her brother on the shoulder:
- Volodya, what’s wrong with you?
Efremov fell helplessly on his side. Natalya tried to feel her pulse. The heart didn't beat! She began to perform artificial respiration, but her brother was not breathing.
Natalya, a doctor herself, knew that the chances of salvation were decreasing every minute. I tried to “start” my heart by massaging my chest. The eighth minute was ending when her palms felt a weak response push. The heart turned on. Vladimir Grigorievich began to breathe on his own.
- Alive! - his sister hugged him. - We thought you were dead. That's it, it's over!
“There is no end,” Vladimir Grigorievich whispered. - There is life there too. But different. Better…
Vladimir Grigorievich recorded his experience during clinical death in every detail. His testimony is priceless. This is the first scientific study of the afterlife by a scientist who has experienced death himself. Vladimir Grigorievich published his observations in the journal “Scientific and Technical Gazette of the St. Petersburg State Technical University”, and then spoke about them at a scientific congress.
His report on the afterlife became a sensation.
It is impossible to imagine such a thing! - said Professor Anatoly Smirnov, head of the International Club of Scientists.
Vladimir Efremov’s reputation in scientific circles is impeccable.
He is a major specialist in the field of artificial intelligence; he worked at the Impulse Design Bureau for a long time. Participated in the launch of Gagarin, contributed to the development of the latest missile systems. His research team received the State Prize four times.
Before his clinical death, he considered himself an absolute atheist, says Vladimir Grigorievich. - I trusted only the facts. He considered all discussions about the afterlife to be religious nonsense. To be honest, I didn’t think about death then. There was so much to do in the service that it would be impossible to sort it out in ten lifetimes. There was no time for further treatment - my heart was naughty, chronic bronchitis was tormenting me, and other ailments were annoying me.
On March 12, at the house of my sister, Natalya Grigorievna, I had a coughing attack. I felt like I was suffocating. My lungs didn’t listen to me, I tried to take a breath - but couldn’t! The body became weak, the heart stopped. The last air left the lungs with wheezing and foam. The thought flashed through my mind that this was the last second of my life.
But for some reason my consciousness did not turn off. Suddenly there was a feeling of extraordinary lightness. Nothing hurt me anymore - neither my throat, nor my heart, nor my stomach. I only felt this comfortable as a child. I did not feel my body and did not see it. But all my feelings and memories were with me. I was flying somewhere along a giant pipe. The sensations of flying turned out to be familiar - something similar had happened before in a dream. Mentally I tried to slow down the flight and change its direction. Happened! There was no horror or fear. Only bliss. I tried to analyze what was happening. The conclusions came instantly. The world you've entered exists. I think, therefore I also exist. And my thinking has the property of causality, since it can change the direction and speed of my flight.
Everything was fresh, bright and interesting,” Vladimir Grigorievich continues his story. - My consciousness worked completely differently than before. It embraced everything at once at the same time; for it there was no time or distance. I admired the world around me. It was as if he had been rolled into a tube. I didn’t see the sun, there was even light everywhere, casting no shadows. Some heterogeneous structures reminiscent of relief are visible on the walls of the pipe. It was impossible to determine where was up and where was down.
I tried to remember the area I was flying over. It looked like some kind of mountains.
I remembered the landscape without any difficulty; the volume of my memory was truly bottomless. I tried to return to the place I had already flown over, imagining it in my mind. Everything worked out! It was like teleportation.
TV
A crazy thought came,” Efremov continues his story. - To what extent can you influence the world around you? And is it possible to return to your past life? I mentally imagined an old broken TV from my apartment. And I saw it from all sides at once. Somehow I knew everything about him. How and where it was constructed. He knew where the ore was mined, from which the metals used in the construction were smelted. Knew which steelmaker did it. I knew that he was married, that he had problems with his mother-in-law. I saw everything connected with this TV globally, being aware of every little detail. And he knew exactly which part was faulty. Then, when I was revived, I changed that T-350 transistor and the TV started working...
There was a feeling of the omnipotence of thought. Our design bureau struggled for two years to solve the most difficult problem related to cruise missiles. And suddenly, imagining this design, I saw the problem in all its versatility. And the solution algorithm arose by itself.
Then I wrote it down and IMPLEMENTED it...
The realization that he was not alone in the next world came to Efremov gradually.
My information interaction with the environment gradually lost its one-sided character,” says Vladimir Grigorievich. - The answer to the formulated question appeared in my mind. At first, such answers were perceived as a natural result of reflection. But the information coming to me began to go beyond the knowledge that I had during my lifetime. The knowledge gained in this tube was many times greater than my previous knowledge!
I realized that I was being guided by Someone who was omnipresent and had no boundaries. And He has unlimited capabilities, is omnipotent and full of love. This invisible, but tangible subject with my whole being did everything so as not to frighten me. I realized that it was He who showed me phenomena and problems in all cause and effect relationships. I didn’t see Him, but I felt Him acutely. And I knew that it was God...
Suddenly I noticed that something was bothering me. I was dragged outside like a carrot from a garden. I didn’t want to go back, everything was fine. Everything flashed and I saw my sister. She was scared, and I was beaming with delight...
Comparison
Efremov in his scientific works described the afterlife using mathematical and physical terms. In this article we decided to try to do without complex concepts and formulas.
Vladimir Grigorievich, what can you compare the world to which you found yourself after death?
Any comparison will be incorrect. The processes there do not proceed linearly, like ours, they are not extended over time. They go at the same time and in all directions. Objects “in the next world” are presented in the form of information blocks, the content of which determines their location and properties. Everything and everyone is in a cause-and-effect relationship with each other. Objects and properties are enclosed in a single global information structure, in which everything goes according to the laws set by the leading subject - that is, God. He is subject to the appearance, change or removal of any objects, properties, processes, including the passage of time.
How free is a person, his consciousness, his soul in his actions?
A person, as a source of information, can also influence objects in the sphere accessible to him. By my will, the relief of the “pipe” changed, and earthly objects appeared.
Looks like the films “Solaris” and “The Matrix”...
And to a giant computer game. But both worlds, ours and the afterlife, are real. They constantly interact with each other, although they are isolated from one another, and together with the governing subject - God - they form a global intellectual system.
Our world is simpler to comprehend; it has a rigid framework of constants that ensure the inviolability of the laws of nature; the connecting principle of events is time.
In the afterlife there are either no constants at all, or there are significantly fewer of them than in ours, and they can change. The basis for the construction of that world is made up of information formations containing the entire set of known and still unknown properties of material objects in the complete absence of the objects themselves. Just as it happens on Earth under computer simulation conditions. I understand that a person sees there what he wants to see. Therefore, descriptions of the afterlife by people who have experienced death differ from each other. The righteous sees heaven, the sinner sees hell...
For me, death was an indescribable joy, incomparable to anything on Earth. Even love for a woman is nothing compared to what you experienced there...
Vladimir Grigorievich read the Holy Scriptures after his resurrection. And I found confirmation of my posthumous experience and my thoughts about the informational essence of the world.
The Gospel of John says that “in the beginning was the Word,” Efremov quotes the Bible. - And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was with God in the beginning. All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that was made.” Is this not a hint that in Scripture the “word” refers to a certain global information essence that includes the comprehensive content of everything?
Efremov put his posthumous experience into practice. He brought the key to many complex problems that have to be solved in earthly life from there.
The thinking of all people has the property of causality, says Vladimir Grigorievich. - But few people realize this. In order not to cause harm to yourself and others, you need to follow religious standards of life. Holy books are dictated by the Creator, this is a technology for the safety of humanity...
Vladimir Efremov: “Death is not scary for me now. I know this is a door to another world."
The ones that talk about communicating with them are of greatest value. Only thanks to such evidence can we obtain at least some information about the afterlife.
It should be said that the information that ghosts give on this matter is full of vague omissions. The inhabitants of the afterlife avoid direct answers in every possible way and shy away from a meaningful, serious conversation on the topic of afterlife.
The human soul is immortal
At the end of the last century, a certain Nikolai Semenovich Veselov, a young clergyman, died. His friend Archpriest Sokolov, who was in another city at that time, was not aware of this. Suddenly, the man saw an unusually vivid dream: a Kherson cemetery, a monument in which a significant hole was formed from fallen stones...
Feeling curiosity, I climbed into this hole, the archpriest recalls. A light flashed ahead, and, having crossed the passage, I suddenly found myself in a most beautiful garden. Veselov was walking along the alley towards me.
What fate, Nikolai Semenovich? – I exclaimed in surprise.
“I died,” he answered, “and now you see...
At the same time, his face shone, his eyes shone wonderfully. I wanted to kiss him, but he pulled back and pulled me away with his hands.
“I died,” my friend repeated. - Don't come closer.
And he continued on his way again, and I walked next to him, not trying to touch him anymore and hoping that Nikolai would tell me something else. And he actually said:
I'm alive, even though I'm dead. And in general, dead or alive – it’s all the same.
Soon the archpriest learned of Veselov's death.
What conclusion can be drawn from this dream? Yes, the simplest one. The spirit of the deceased says: “I am alive, although I am dead.” Thus, he confirms the existence of a posthumous reality.
A guide is needed to the afterlife
This “contact story” also happened in the last century. This is what the man who was its main character said...
…One day, when I was sitting in my office and my consciousness was absolutely clear, I noticed some kind of glow in the corner of the room. Soon I discerned in this light the figure of a man, a monk. I admit, I felt very scared, and the figure, approaching, said:
Why are you trembling? Don’t be afraid, I’m your relative – Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. You are the only one of my relatives left alive, and only you can help me restore my mother’s grave. Now it is completely razed. The slab and the cross from it are kept near the church, next to the cemetery. The tablet with the inscription is also intact. You must contact the rector of the cemetery church and ensure that everything on the grave is restored.
What was happening made me very nervous. My thoughts were confused, I began to ask where exactly in the church the cross and the slab were kept. The Metropolitan pointed out exactly the place where to look for them. When our conversation ended, his figure seemed to disappear into thin air.
The rector of the cemetery church, to whom I turned, was skeptical of my story and flatly refused to do anything to restore the grave. However, after some time, Metropolitan Philaret appeared to me again and insisted that his request be fulfilled. He also said that he would come again and this would happen before my death. From his words I understood that the ruler would become my guide to the afterlife...
After this, with the help of the rector of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, I managed to submit a corresponding note to the patriarch. By order of His Holiness, the grave of Metropolitan Philaret’s mother was completely restored. At the same time, the tombstone and cross were found exactly where the ghost indicated...
...What does this story tell us? The fact that one can get to the afterlife (or is only possible) with the help of a guide. That is why the spirit of the long-dead metropolitan promised his relative to become a guide for his soul on the way to the kingdom of the dead.
First, the soul in the afterlife languishes in “quarantine”
If we analyze many other pieces of evidence, we can conclude that the human soul in the next world first falls into a kind of “quarantine zone.” While in it, she is still “stranger to the angels.”
In this “dressing room” of posthumous existence there is no entertainment of any kind. Spirits communicate with each other on a telepathic level. Longing for earthly life, they want to return to the living even for a moment. But for this, the spirits need to ask permission from a special “guardian”; only he can allow a short absence “to the sinful earth.” However, this is much better than being stuck for some reason between earth and heaven and becoming the ghost of a graveyard, castle or house. The spirit can remain in this state for many years and even centuries...
...So, an afterlife civilization certainly exists, and you can get there with the help of a personal guard-escort. Perhaps everyone has one, or maybe only those who deserve it...
Is there hell in the next world? Most likely, there is no such thing as some religions portray it to us (for example, Christianity). True hell manifests itself differently. Isn’t staying on earth for centuries in a subtle body, without the opportunity to go to heaven, hell? I think there are many such terrible torments. Spirits, as a rule, only hint at them to us, without saying anything specific. It is likely that the sinner experiences hellish torment not in heaven, but on earth - after his rebirth (reincarnation), receiving such a fate that, as they say, you would not wish on your enemy...
That's all, we don't know anything else about the afterlife. In reports about it, only the approaches to its threshold are indicated with a faint dotted line. Of course, there are books whose authors in one way or another describe the other world, in particular Michael Newton’s book “The Purpose of the Soul. Life between lives." The famous regressive hypnotherapist wrote it based on the stories of people whom he put into hypnosis and in this state awakened in them the memory of past lives, including in the next world.
To believe all this or not is a personal matter for everyone. Of course, to paraphrase a well-known saying, we can say this: if we die, we will see. By the way, it is not religious and spiritual people who like to repeat it more, but ardent materialists, as if thus resurrecting in their memory the knowledge of past lives and life in heaven, nevertheless being afraid to admit to themselves that all this is much more real than ours physical world...
Victoria Prime
The other world has always interested man. And today the desire to find out about this overcomes many. Hundreds of programs and feature films are made about this. Modern society is increasingly less likely to believe in fairy tales and stories about heaven and hell. A person needs proof and confirmation of everything he hears.
What is the other world?
Initially, it was understood as a place of complete love and harmony, where a person born and raised in love finds himself, carrying this feeling to others, and must die with it. In this case, death does not bring grief, but joy and anticipation of meeting loved ones. This place can be different for everyone, because everyone has their own idea of happiness.
The other world, like all living things, was created by God. There a person must remain after the end of his earthly life. This world should bring joy and reflect the inner
What is the afterlife like in reality?
If an ideal place for human souls existed, it did not last long. The whole point is that goodness and love on earth increasingly collide with evil, selfishness and betrayal. Even the purest souls are constantly tested and are sometimes unable to withstand the world around them. Negative emotions and thoughts living in the soul do not disappear anywhere after death. They are transported to the other world, infecting it and destroying it. Considering that this place is a reflection of the human soul, it is easy to imagine what it will be like in this case.
Connection with the other world
He understands the world around him in his own way, including the other world. It is associated only with the habitat of ghosts, spirits and ghosts. Many people strive to look behind the veil of the unknown and find out what awaits them there. To do this, they resort to magic or the help of specialists. The most popular items for communication sessions with the souls of ancestors are candles and mirrors. They have long been considered guides to another world. Even in modern society, there is a custom of covering mirrors if someone has died in the house.
However, communication with the other world is as dangerous as it is interesting. This should be done only after preliminary preparation, preferably together with an experienced person. Otherwise, otherworldly forces can harm people’s lives and health.
Many spirits for some reason do not leave our world. They remain in the places to which they were attached during life. Many of them fail to realize for a long time that they have died. It is believed that the most difficult people to repose are those who died a violent death. They have unfinished business, and a growing feeling of resentment and anger for their ruined life.
Eternal life in love and harmony
As mentioned above, the other world reflects the spiritual “I” of a person. Everyone brings there what they have cultivated in themselves during their lifetime. A soul overflowing with love will find peace in a beautiful and harmonious world filled with happiness. Hatred and selfishness will not bring anything good to a person even after death. The lot of such souls is eternal wandering, fear and hopelessness.
It’s hard to believe, of course, but his story about whether there is life after death is all the more convincing since the narrator is a neurosurgeon and doesn’t go to church.
Thousands of people have had near-death experiences and reported seeing “light at the end of the tunnel,” but scientists say these are just hallucinations. Strictly speaking, finding a scientist who believes in an afterlife is not so easy. But one of the most famous and experienced neurosurgeons in the United States, Dr. Alexander Eben, is among those who believe his experience was more than just a hallucination.
His brain was recently attacked by a rare disease. The part of the brain that controls thoughts and emotions - that is, in essence, makes us human - was completely disabled. For seven days Eben lay in a coma. Then, when the doctors were ready to stop treatment, and the relatives agreed to euthanasia, Eben’s eyes suddenly opened. He is back.
Alexander's recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in a coma, Alexander went beyond this world and seemed to meet with an angelic being who opened up to him the realm of super-physical existence. He claims to have met and touched the source of “the Universe itself.”
Eben's story is not fiction. Before this story happened to him, he was one of the world's best neurologists. He did not believe in God, the afterlife, or the existence of the soul. Today, Eben is a physician who believes that true health can only be achieved when we understand that God and the soul are real and death is not the end of our journey, but only a transition point in our existence.
No one would have paid attention to this story if it had happened to another person. But the fact that it happened to Dr. Eben makes it revolutionary. No scientist or religious person can ignore his experience. After all, Eben was full of patients who had returned from comas. Some of them told the same stories that the neurosurgeon himself is now relaying. But then he considered them simply hallucinations.
Eben now teaches, among other things, at Harvard Medical School. He often talks to his students about what he experienced. And no one thinks he is crazy - he continues to work as a surgeon.
Near death experiences usually change people incredibly. If you have experienced a serious illness or major accident, it can have a greater impact on your life than you may even imagine.
Eben wrote a book: "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife." In it, he not only talked about his own experience of meeting the afterlife, but also retold the stories of his patients who experienced the same thing as him. Here are her brightest moments.
“I understand what happens to the brain when people are on the verge of death, and I have always believed that the journeys beyond the boundaries of one’s own body, which are described by those who managed to escape death, have a completely scientific explanation. The brain is an amazingly complex and extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it needs to a minimum and the brain will respond. It was not news that people who had suffered severe traumas returned from their “journeys” with strange stories. But this did not mean that their travels were real."
I didn't envy those who believed that Jesus was more than just a good man who was wronged by society. I felt deeply for those who believed that there was a God out there somewhere who truly loved us. In fact, I envied the sense of security that their faith gave these people. But as a scientist, I simply knew, and did not believe...
Early one morning four years ago, I woke up with a severe headache. Doctors at Virginia Lynchburg General Hospital, where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, decided that I had somehow become infected with a very rare disease - bacterial meningitis, which mainly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had entered my spinal fluid and was eating my brain. When I arrived at the emergency room, my chances of living and not being a vegetable were extremely low. Soon they dropped to almost zero. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive and my brain unable to function. Then, on the morning of the seventh day, when the doctors were deciding whether to continue treatment, my eyes opened...
There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body was in a coma, my mind and my inner world were alive and well. While the neurons of the cerebral cortex were defeated by bacteria, my consciousness went to another, much larger Universe - a dimension that I could not even imagine and which my pre-comatose mind would prefer to call “unreal”. But this dimension is the same , described by countless people who have experienced clinical death and other mystical states, exists. It is there, and what I saw and learned literally opened up a new world for me: a world in which we are much more than just the brain and body, and where death is not the fading of consciousness, but rather the chapter of a larger and very positive journey. I am not the first person to discover evidence that consciousness exists outside the body. These stories are as old as human history. But, as far as I know, no one before me had ever been in this dimension while a) their cerebral cortex was completely non-functional and b) their body was under medical supervision.
All the main arguments against afterlife experiences are based on the fact that these events are the result of a “malfunction” of the CGM. However, I went through my own experience with a completely non-functional cortex. According to modern medical understanding of the brain and mind, there was no way I could have experienced even the remotest semblance of what I experienced...
I spent several months trying to understand and come to terms with what had happened to me. At the beginning of my adventures I was in the clouds. Large, fluffy, pinkish-white, floating across the blue-black sky. A flock of transparent shimmering creatures flew high, high above the clouds, leaving long trails behind them, like airplanes. Birds? Angels? These words came up later when I was writing down my memories. But none of these words can describe those creatures. They were simply different from anything else on this planet. They were more advanced. The highest form of life...
There came a sound from above, like a beautiful choir singing, and I thought, “Is this from them?” Later, thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the sound was born from the joy of these beings growing up together - they simply could not contain it. The sound was palpable and almost tangible, like the rain you feel on your skin without getting you wet to the bone. For most of my journey, someone was with me. Woman. She was young and I remember in detail what she looked like. She had high cheekbones and dark blue eyes. Golden-brown braids framed her beautiful face. When I first saw her, we were driving together along a complex patterned surface, which after a while I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. Millions of butterflies circled around us, flying out of the forest and returning back. It was a river of life and color flowing through the air. The woman's clothes were simple, like those of a peasant woman, but her color, blue, indigo and orange-peach, was as bright as everything that surrounded us. She looked at me with such a look that if you were under it for even five seconds, your whole life would be filled with meaning, regardless of what you experienced. It was not a romantic view. It wasn't the look of a friend. It was a look beyond it all. Something higher, including all types of love, and at the same time much more.
She spoke to me without words. Her words passed through me like the wind, and I immediately knew it was true. I knew this just as I knew that the world around us was real. Her message consisted of three sentences, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, they would mean the following: “ You are always loved and cared for, dear. You have nothing to fear. There's nothing you can do wrong."
Her words gave me a huge feeling of relief. It was as if someone had explained to me the rules of a game that I had been playing all my life without understanding them. “We will show you a lot of things,” the woman continued. “But then you’ll come back.”
After that, I only had one question left: where will I go back? A warm wind was blowing, like what happens on a warm summer day. Wonderful breeze. It changed everything around, as if the world around me sounded an octave higher and acquired higher vibrations. Although I could speak, I began to silently ask the wind questions: “Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here?” Every time I silently asked my questions, the answer came instantly in the form of an explosion of light, color, love and beauty passing through me in waves. What is important is that these explosions did not “shut up” me, but responded, but in such a way as to avoid words - I directly accepted the thoughts. Not the way it happens on Earth - vaguely and abstractly. These thoughts were hard and fast, hot as fire and wet as water, and as soon as I accepted them, I instantly and effortlessly understood concepts that in my normal life would have taken me years to understand.
I continued to move forward and found myself at the entrance to a void, completely dark, infinite in size, but incredibly calming. Despite the blackness, it was filled with light, which seemed to emanate from the shining ball that I felt next to me. He was like a translator between me and the outside world. The woman with whom we walked on the wing of a butterfly guided me with the help of this ball.
I know very well how unusual and frankly unbelievable this all sounds. If someone, even a doctor, told me such a story, I would be sure that he was in captivity of some kind of delusion. But what happened to me was far from crazy. It was as real as any event in my life - like my wedding day and the birth of my two sons. What happened to me requires an explanation. Modern physics tells us that the Universe is one and indivisible. Although we seem to live in a world of divisions and differences, physics tells us that every object and event in the Universe is made up of other objects and events. There is no true separation. Before I had my experience, these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. The universe is defined not only by unity, but also - now I know this - by love. When I felt better, I tried to tell others about my experience, but their reaction was polite disbelief. One of the few places where I did not encounter this problem was church. Entering there for the first time after the coma, I looked at everything with different eyes. The colors of the stained glass windows reminded me of the sparkling beauty of the landscapes that I saw in the upper world, and the bass of the organ reminded me of the thoughts and emotions that I experienced there. And most importantly, the image of Jesus sharing bread with his disciples awakened in me the memory of the words that have accompanied my entire journey - that God loves me unconditionally.
Today many believe that spiritual truths have lost their power and that the path to truth is science, not faith. Before my experience, I thought so myself. But now I understand that such an opinion was too simple. The fact is that a materialistic view of our body and brain is doomed. A new way of looking at mind and body will take its place. It will take a long time to put together this new picture of reality. Neither I nor my sons will be able to finish it. Reality is too vast, complex and mysterious.
But, in essence, it will show the Universe developing, multidimensional and studied down to the last atom by God, who cares for us as no parent cares for his child. I am still a doctor and a man of science. But at a deep level, I am very different from the person I was before, because I saw this new picture of reality. And, you can believe me, every step of the work that we and our descendants will have to do will be worth it.”
