It's been awhile since I read the book, but I pulled it out last night to check the spelling, and it is indeed "Pim van Lommel". It's a Dutch name. He worked in a Dutch hospital as a cardiologist for some time.
A coma, cardiac arrest, and brain death are three different things. With a coma, the patient is alive but not conscious. Patients in comas do indeed dream, and some of them have reported hearing real life people talking in their presence, but they were unable to answer them. I personally know a guy who has experienced this. I read an article once, I believe it was in Reader's Digest, where a guy visited his comatose brother and read the newspaper to him every day for months. The patient came out of his coma bit by bit, and eventually started responding to his brother's presence. The doctors believed that the reading contributed to the patient's recovery, although it may not have been the sole cause.
Cardiac arrest means that your heart has stopped beating. People used to call that "dead", but not so much anymore. Now you are not considered legally dead until there is no detectable electrical activity in your brain. I understand that they have a machine that measures this, but I'm not sure how often it comes into use. Sometimes auto accident victims will be "pronounced dead at the scene". I don't know if the ambulance medics have the machine on board, or if there is a point where a body is so severely damaged that they figure they can safely assume that it's dead. Apparently your brain can survive without your heart for a little while and, if they jump start your heart in time, they can bring you back. Cold water drowning victims have been brought back after as long a 20 minutes under water, but that is the exception. It is believed that the cold water causes the body to enter a state similar to hibernation, which preserves it a little longer. Other than that, I believe the limit is about 10 to 15 minutes but, after five minutes, there is a risk that your brain will be permanently damaged.
Most of the people who report near death experiences were brought back from cardiac arrest, although people who have had close calls with drowning or other traumatic events occasionally report a similar experience. This may be the origin of the old saying that, when you are drowning, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I tend to agree with you that the near death experience is probably a dream or a hallucination, but I still think it's pretty impressive that a dead person can even have a dream or a hallucination. Well, I suppose they're not completely dead, which is why they call it a near death experience, but I still think it's impressive.
According to the book, the people who conducted the Lommel survey were careful not to "lead the witness". They just asked the subjects if they remembered anything from the time they were out and asked them to describe it in their own words. Many of the subjects claimed that what they experienced couldn't be described in words, but they were asked to do the best they could. Of course, this is only anecdotal evidence, but what makes it a scientific study is that all the responses were tabulated and catalogued. All the subjects did not report exactly the same things, but a list of about a dozen characteristic elements of their experiences was developed. While nobody experienced all of the elements, everybody experienced one or more of them. Most of the subjects reported their experiences as being pleasant, but a few reported what Lommel calls "the negative experience". What these guys saw was more like a glimpse of Hell than a glimpse of Heaven, and they were glad to be brought back from the brink. Some of the positive guys were also happy to come home, but some of them were resentful and wished that the doctors had minded their own business. At least one subject was so eager to go back there that he attempted suicide. I don't remember the method he used, but he was saved from that one too, and had another experience in the process. He said that this second experience taught him that suicide was not he answer, and he never attempted it again.
Like I said, I would like to talk to somebody who has actually crossed the point of no return and came back to tell about it. All they've proven so far is that human consciousness can survive a few minutes, probably for the few minutes that it takes for the brain to shut down after the heart stops beating. It has occurred to me that, if they can jump start the heart today, they might be able to jump start the brain in the future. I would volunteer for something like that. I wouldn't want them to kill but, if I'm already dead, they can experiment with my dead brain all they want. What would I have to lose? For it is written: "The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing."
No comments:
Post a Comment