Let me tell you of my first contact with a Near Death Experience. I was even more puzzled than Lloyd Rudy, this heart surgeon, when he encountered an NDE for the first time!

It was at the Civic Center. About 50 people, all ages, men and women, dressed like you and I, nothing religious or political about them. There was a speaker who told us about what happened after he fell from a tree, trying to cut a dead branch. He got badly hurt and was sent to hospital for immediate surgery. That was something totally unexpected in his life. He was a mechanic dentist, making dentures (like the one I have). He thought his life was well organized and perfectly predictable.

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He told us that during the operation his heart stopped beating. He had no blood pressure and was not breathing for more than 30 minutes. He was clinically dead. A doctor could have signed his death certificate and send him to the morgue. Since the 1980s the surgeons have found ways to reanimate dead bodies and bring them back to life. I always thought that death was a one-way street. Apparently, body and soul can be taken apart and put back together again. I watched him carefully. He looked perfectly normal. He was not promoting a book or introducing a new faith. I tried to see if there was some mercantile motivation hidden behind all that. I did not find any.

 

When the surgeon paid him a visit in the hospital a couple of days later, he was told:

“At one time during the operation you said “We are losing him!” I was above the operating table, against the ceiling. At first, I did not realize that it was my body that you were working on. I felt great. No more pain.

I could hear and understand everything people were saying in the operating room. You got impatient with your assistant - Didn’t you? Not only could I hear what everybody was saying but I knew what they wanted to say even before I heard their voice. I could guess what they were thinking. I could also move in the room. I only had to think of a certain place to be transported there instantly. That may sound ungrateful but after a while I got tired of watching you. I decided to explore other rooms in the hospital. It was easy. Without a body there is nothing to prevent you from getting across a wall and have a look at what is on the other side….”

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As you can imagine the first patients coming back from an operation with such stories in the 1980s were sent to the psychiatrist. An appraisal was made of the differences between the patient and a “normal” person. Medications were prescribed to make the patient behave in a more ‘normal’ way. Most of the time, it worked! The patient understood that medications could become the main part of his diet. The only way to avoid this predicament was to say: “I got confused because of the stress of the operation. I am feeling better now. Forget what I said.” 

Our speaker decided to go through life keeping his secret. I was told that today we have about 2% or 3% of the population who went through an NDE - Maybe more. There are millions of people around with similar stories. We don't send them to psychiatrists anymore. They have their international organizations such as IANDS - NDERF - ADCRF - OBERF with their web sites on the internet.

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There was an intermission. It was even more interesting. People from the audience were talking about their life after the NDE. They kept some of the abilities they had during their NDE trip. Some of them can guess what others are thinking. If you ever go to one of their meetings and see a big nose, try very hard to think ”What beautiful hair”! People around you can "see" your thoughts like you see their nose.
Some people of the audience were talking about meeting somebody for the first time and having a very strong impression. They thought that they already knew that person. A woman saw a girl singing on TV in a foreign language and had the feeling that it was her sister who was singing. I asked her how often that can happen. She  said about once a year. Nobody could explain it. Maybe they meet in a previous life time. Maybe this is related to what we call ‘love at first sight’.