For the first time serious attention to the process of death was drawn in the 60s in connection with the publication of a book entitled "On Death and Dying", written by the famous Swedish psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She worked with a former Nazi concentration camp inmate and became convinced that something unexpected happened at the time of death.
As a young philosophy student, Dr. Raymond Moody came across an experience with Dr. George Ritchie, a Virginia psychiatrist.
It was announced that Richie died of bilateral pneumonia, but he experienced a near-death condition that, as such, had not yet been studied and recognized at the time.
Moody collected similar stories for his future bestseller Life After Life, which initiated the study of the phenomenon of clinical death.
Gradually, scientists from other specialties joined this work. Among them - American cardiologist Dr. Michael Sabom (Sabom), who published in 1982 the results of his observations: "Memories of Death: Medical Research." Initially a skeptic, Sabom sought medical confirmation that such cases were real by testing whether the patient could describe the resuscitation techniques being used on him. If so, he could only see them from his floating disembodied state.
Sabom and Moody asked the scientific community for permission to seriously study this phenomenon. Later, the International Association for the Study of the Phenomenon of Clinical Death was created - a place where scientists could exchange discoveries and ideas.
Promotional video:
In Britain, a branch of the Association was opened by Margot Gray, a psychologist and practitioner in clinical psychotherapy. Margot herself experienced clinical death while traveling through India in 1976. Her research appeared in the book Returning from the Dead.
In the eyes of the scientific community, we owe much of the legalization of these works to Dr. Kenneth Ring. He was able to show that religious beliefs, age and nationality are not reflected in experience. As a person interested in an altered state of consciousness, he only had to hear a story about what he saw during clinical death in order to seriously get carried away with this problem.
This happened in 1977, and since then Ring has been studying clinical death and related events. It was Ring who created the International Association.
In 1992, Dr. Ring published the results of an in-depth study of clinical deaths versus the alleged “temporary abductions” of humans by aliens. Such an idea seemed extremely challenging, if not absurd. But Project Omega showed that there is clearly something in common between these phenomena.
In both cases, the person is in an altered state of consciousness and experiences similar unusual visual sensations. In the future, both those and others return with a changed outlook on life and with increased mental abilities. Dr. Ring believes that, unlike us, such people have a different perception of reality.
David Lorimer, former Wingester teacher, Chairman of the Association (1992). He says:
“Some scientists describe near-death visions as pure hallucinations, because their formation makes them react that way. We have recorded many examples of clinical death without cerebral inoxia (oxygen starvation of the brain). Now we have developed a program for classifying and sorting many letters with messages about this phenomenon. Then we will conduct scientific research and publish the results in scientific journal articles."
Dr. Peter Fenwick is a Neurophysiology Consultant at St Thomas and Models Hospital London. He is also the President of the Association. Dr. Fenwick believes the clinical death mystery can be explained in more general terms:
“The answer depends on whether I am of a scientific or conventional point of view. Both can be taken into account. Maybe there is a connection with quantum mechanics. A worldwide view of life after death could help to comprehend its reality, and not find a workaround."
The question naturally arises: is there any other evidence, independent of the descriptions given by people who have experienced death, that would confirm the reality of what we call death experiences? Many people report that when they were out of their body, they saw events taking place in the physical world. Are any of these reports corroborated by other witnesses known to have been present nearby?
With regard to a fairly large number of cases, this question can be answered absolutely in the affirmative - "Yes!" Moreover, the descriptions of events contained in the testimonies of people who have experienced out-of-body experiences are very accurate.
Several doctors said they simply could not understand how patients without any medical knowledge could describe the resuscitation procedure in such detail and correctly, while the doctors who performed the resuscitation knew for sure that the patients were dead.
On several occasions, patients described the amazement with which doctors and other people were greeted by their stories about what was happening around them while they were “dead”.
For example, one girl said that while she was dead and out of her body, she went to another room, where she saw her older sister crying and whispering: "Oh, Katie, please don't die!" Later, her sister was extremely surprised when Katie told her where she saw her and what she (sister) was saying at the time.