Memories from intensive care or on the other side
One of the experiences of the reanimated is connected with the sensation of movement. “I heard the doctor say that I was dead, and then I felt like I began to fall or as if swimming through some blackness, some closed space. Words cannot convey it. " “After vibrating and moving through a long, dark space…” “I ended up in a narrow tunnel… I started to enter this tunnel head first, it was very dark. I began to move down through this darkness."
Here is another piece of evidence from the memories of those who experienced clinical death:
“I felt that I was floating above my body, saw it, tried to control it, but it did not react. Then I got involved in a kind of circulation, something like roller coasters at fairs. It was awful. I heard a scream, a high-pitched whistle, harsh, discordant music. I didn’t understand how to get out of all this. Horror!" Then he suddenly calmed down: it seemed to him that he saw a black hole - the entrance to a certain tunnel and that he was "irresistibly pulled into this tunnel … I swam inside and began to move on blindly."
There are many such evidences. And again such memories, it turns out, have analogies in the messages of the past, where there are descriptions of being on the other side of life. Thus, the Nganasans living in the Turukhansk region are well aware of the practice of shamanistic travel to the afterlife. There is also mention of a path through a completely dark narrow passage.
(The soul moves along it when the team takes it to the world of ancestors.) The path to the “other world” through the dark tunnel is also known among the Zyryans.
Feelings, images in a posthumous state inevitably pass through the prism of previous experience, through the realities of a particular culture. Accordingly, such experiences are expressed in the language of this experience, this culture. Hence the fact that among the Turukhan Nganasans reindeer are engaged in the transportation of souls, and such, by the way, a detail such as the fact that the walls of a dark, narrow tunnel consist of snow.
It is logical that in the ancient Babylonian texts the long posthumous path of the soul lies through the deserts, and in Russian folk lamentations it is the path “through forests, but through dense, through swamps, through rippling, through streams, through rough …”.
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As one researcher emphasized, the very experience of the posthumous state does not depend on the faith or cultural system to which people belong. But the system of culture, its symbols leave an imprint on the image of such an experience.
The sensation of movement, passing through a dark tunnel is called every third or fourth reanimated person who retained the memory of his posthumous state.
In numerous cases, the reanimated tell about some kind of light, as if waiting at the end of the tunnel. “Little by little I began to distinguish a faint white light in the depths. It became brighter, stronger, sharper. I was blinded by this light - and at the same time I was inexorably attracted to it, like a moth to a window pane. (Memories of the reanimated.) The path through the darkness to the light is mentioned quite often. Often this light is personified, endowed with personality traits.
In ancient Russian legends, for example, at the end of the path, "ordeals", the soul meets God. In all cases, at the end of the tunnel, as a result of the movement, there is a meeting with the light. “Where the light shines, there I strive” (Rig-Veda, India). Zyryans have this sun, bright sunlight. Sometimes this light can be associated with the image of the door: "A very bright light was coming from under the door." It is curious that this symbol - light and a door - is also in the memory of blessed Fedora about her posthumous state: "The heavenly gates were as if from a light crystal and shone wonderfully."
One more piece of evidence, which I will give further, is very interesting, in my opinion. The event I want to tell you about happened in a provincial Russian city at the end of the 19th century. The main character, K. Ikskul, after what happened to him, after some time went to the monastery. Here is his short story:
“… I had a chance to get to K. in the service business and get seriously ill. Since I had neither relatives, nor even my own servants in K., I had a chance to go to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed me with pneumonia."
K. Ikskul describes the course of the disease in detail. The temperature was high for several days, then it suddenly dropped, probably a crisis. “I remember that around four o'clock I felt a kind of slight chill and, intending to get warm, I ducked tightly into the blanket and went to bed, but I suddenly felt very ill.
I called a paramedic; he came up and lifted me from the pillow and handed me a bag of oxygen, somewhere a bell was heard, and a few minutes later a senior paramedic came into my ward, and then, one by one, both of our doctors. At another time, this unusual gathering of all medical personnel and the speed with which they gathered would have embarrassed me, but now I took it absolutely indifferently, as if it concerned me at all.
A strange change suddenly happened in my mood! A minute before that, cheerful, I now, although I saw and understood everything that was happening around me, but to all this I suddenly had such an incomprehensible indifference, such alienation, which, it seems, is not even characteristic of a living being.
I saw, for example, how the doctor stretched out his hand and took my pulse - I saw and realized what he was doing, but did not feel his touch. I saw and understood that the doctors, lifting me up, everyone did something and fussed over my back, with which, perhaps, my swelling began, but what they did - I did not feel anything, and not because I actually lost the ability to feel, but because I was not at all interested in it, because, having gone somewhere deep inside myself, I did not listen and did not follow what they were doing.
In me, as it were, suddenly revealed two beings: one - hidden somewhere deep and most important; other external and probably less significant; and now it was as if the compound that bound them had burned out and melted, and they disintegrated, and the strongest was felt by me brightly, definitely, and the weakest became indifferent. This weakest was my body.
I can imagine how, perhaps, just a few days ago, I would have been amazed at the discovery in myself of this previously unknown inner being of mine and the realization of its superiority over that other half of mine, which, according to my concepts, was the whole person, but which I hardly noticed now.
Here the doctor asks me questions; I hear and understand that he is asking, but I do not answer, I do not answer because I have no need to talk to him. But he is busy and worried about me, but about that half of my “I”, which has now lost all meaning for me, to which I have nothing to do.
Suddenly I felt that I was being pulled down with incredible force. At the first moment, this sensation resembled how heavy, heavy weights of many pounds were suspended from all my members …
But still, no matter how strong this sensation was, it did not prevent me from thinking and realizing everything; I was also aware of the strangeness of my situation, I remembered and realized the reality, that is, that I was lying on a bed, that my room was on the second floor, that there was the same room below me, but at the same time, by the strength of my sensations, I was convinced that if under me not one, but 10 piled up one on top of the other rooms, all of this will instantly make way for me to let me in … Where?
Somewhere further, deeper, into the ground. It was in the ground, and I wanted to lie on the floor, and I made an effort and darted about.
“Agony,” I heard the doctor say over me.
The meaning of the word “agony” I heard was quite understandable to me, but in me everything has somehow turned upside down now, from my relationships, feelings and concepts inclusive.
“No, I’m not going away, I can’t,” I shouted almost loudly and made an effort to free myself, to break free from the force that attracted me, and suddenly I felt that it was easy for me.
I opened my eyes, and in my memory with perfect clarity, to the smallest detail, everything I saw at that moment was imprinted.
I saw myself standing alone in the middle of the room; to my right, encircling something in a semicircle, crowded all the medical personnel: with their hands behind their backs and gazing at something that I could not see behind their backs, stood the senior doctor, next to him, leaning slightly forward - the junior; an old paramedic, holding a bag of oxygen in his hand, hesitantly shifting from foot to foot, apparently not knowing what to do with his burden now, whether to carry it or it might still be useful; and the young man, bending over, supported something, but from behind his shoulder I could only see the corner of the pillow.
I moved over and looked where everyone was looking.
I was lying on the bed there!
I do not remember that I experienced anything like fear at the sight of my double; I was seized only by perplexity: how so? I felt myself here, and meanwhile I also felt there.
I looked back at myself in the middle of the room. Yes, without a doubt it was me, exactly the same as I knew myself.
I wanted to touch myself, take my left hand with my right hand: my hands went right through, tried to wrap myself around my waist - my hands again passed through my body, as if through empty space.
What happened to me?
I called the doctor, but the atmosphere in which I was staying turned out to be completely unsuitable for me: it did not perceive and did not transmit the sounds of my voice, and I realized the complete disconnection from everything that surrounded me, my strange loneliness, and panic fear seized me.
- No, nothing can be done about it! It's all over - the junior doctor said with a hopeless wave of his hand, and walked away from the bed where the other me was.
I felt incredibly annoyed that they all interpret and fuss over that “I” of mine, which I absolutely did not feel, which now did not exist for me at all, and left without the attention of another, real me, who realizes everything and, tormented by the fear of the unknown, seeks, requires their help."
The further experience of the author of these notes repeated what was said above: rapid movement through an unimaginable space to the light.
“… I saw a bright light above me; he resembled, as it seemed to me, the sun, but was much stronger than him. There is probably some kind of kingdom of light. Yes, it was the kingdom, the complete dominion of the light, anticipating with some special feeling that I had not yet seen, I thought, because there is no shadow in this light.
“But how can there be light without a shadow?” - my earthly concepts immediately appeared with bewilderment.
And suddenly we quickly entered the sphere of this light, and it literally blinded me. I closed my eyes, brought my hands to my face, but this did not help, since my hands did not give a shadow. And what such protection meant!
The inability to see, to look increased for me the fear of the unknown, which is natural when being in a world unknown to me, and I thought with alarm: “What will happen next? How soon will we pass this sphere of light and is there a limit to it, an end? “But something else happened. Majestically, without anger, but imperiously and unshakably from above, the words were heard:
- Not ready!
And then … then there was a momentary stop in our impetuous flight upward, and we quickly began to descend … Here is the hospital building that I remember. Just as before, through the walls of the building and closed doors I was brought into some absolutely unknown room. In this room stood in a row several tables painted with dark paint, and on one of them, covered with something white, I saw myself lying or, rather, my dead, numb body.
Not far from my table, a gray-haired old man in a brown jacket was reading the Psalter with a bent wax candle along the lines of a large print, and on the other side, on a black shop that stood along the wall, was sitting, probably already informed of my death and having managed to arrive, my sister and next to her, bending over and saying something quietly to her, is her husband."
He woke up in a hospital ward on a bed, surrounded by perplexed and confused doctors. “At the feet of my bed,” K. Ikskul continued his story, “my sister was standing, dressed in a mourning dress, with a pale, agitated face, next to her son-in-law, the more calm face of a hospital nurse looked out over her sister’s shoulder, and even further behind she could see the already completely frightened face of our young paramedic."
In fact, doctors had every reason for bewilderment and confusion. Not every day, the deceased, sent to the ice dead and lying there for a day and a half, unexpectedly returns to life by itself. Their bewilderment increased even more when the recent deceased told them not only about what was happening and what was said in the ward after his death, but also described in detail the interior of the corpse, where he lay all the time, until the minute when his body, not yet regaining consciousness, showed signs of returning to life with noisy breathing.
Thus, the ability to see your body, a sense of movement and light at the end of the path - this experience of the posthumous state is repeated, as we see, in the most amazing way.
There is one more group of posthumous experiences. Here the coincidence of the experience of those who survived it and the symbols of the most ancient cultures turn out to be even more complete.
The cuneiform signs on the clay tablets of Ancient Babylon preserved the story of Gilgamesh, “who saw everything” (111 millennium BC). The path of Gilgamesh in the kingdom of the dead was difficult and long: "… the road is hard, the waters of death are deep, that it is blocked."
These waters are the gloomy river Khubur of the later Babylonian tradition.
“„ (Yes) they leave (us) our (saws) go on the road of death, they cross the Hubur River “, - (as) they say from the earliest times”.
Is it not this river on the path of souls going to the afterlife that the ancient Egyptian texts of the pyramids also mention? In ancient consciousness, they correspond to Lethe, Styx and Acheron. The Elysium of the ancient Greeks, the Elysian fields of the Romans, the land of the blessed was located behind a water barrier, on the other side of the river. She, this river, appears on the path of Aeneas when he goes to the land of the dead (Virgil, "Aeneid").
"Thick crowds flock to the bank of the terrible river, Wives walk, and men, and heroes, the host of the dead."
An earlier source - the images on the Etruscan sarcophagi - tells about the same, about a certain water barrier that souls need to cross on their way.
Like other experiences of posthumous experience, this image is not limited to any one area, one culture. The souls of the Chinese righteous, only overcoming the waters, can reach the Islands of the Blessed. The Buddhists of Japan speak about the afterlife Sanzu River. Through the waters of the river beyond the grave passes the way to the land of the dead at the Dayaks (Indonesia). The natives of Australia believe that the souls of the dead are waiting for "Endless waters (river)" - as they call the Milky Way. The river surrounds the world of the departed and the Aztecs. To reach it, one must cross its waters.
We meet the same river in shamanism. When a shaman goes to the world of his ancestors, he also has to cross it, and twice - on the way there and returning. There is this image both in Slavic funeral customs and in Russian folk lamentations - a river that the soul crosses on its posthumous journey. In Russian spiritual verses, the souls of the dead go to the afterlife "across the river", "along the water." Agapni's Walking to Paradise, a 12th century apocrypha, also mentions a journey through the waters.
The ailment torments three months in bed, And I don't seem to be afraid of death.
A casual guest in this terrible body
I, as if in a dream, seem to myself.
A. Akhmatova.
A. Gorbovsky