About the posthumous experiences of people and is known from ancient times. A similar experience is reflected in the myths and religious texts of different peoples, but they began to seriously deal with this issue only in the 20th century, when the achievements of medicine made it possible to bring those back to life. Who. seemingly. already "stepped over the line." And then amazing things began to come to light, and sometimes not inspiring optimism …
Heaven and Hell
In 1976, Dr. Raymond Moody's book Life After Life was published, in which he described the testimonies of 150 people who were in a state of clinical death. The similarity of many details of these descriptions is striking. Almost all survivors talk about crossing (or flying) through the dark tunnel, about what they saw at the end of it, about meetings with angels or with their previously deceased relatives. Some also claimed to have seen magnificent cities inhabited by happy people. All who returned "from there". argued that "there" is much better than here.
But in rare cases, patients told about unpleasant events that happened to them at the time of their "temporary" death.
Austrian actor Kurd Jürgens experienced clinical death during an operation performed by the famous cardiologist Michael DeBakey.
“The feeling of well-being that I experienced after the injection of pentothal did not last long,” Jurgens said. - Soon there was a feeling that life was leaving me. It caused a horror in me, which intensified because of the sudden darkness and the fact that I was twisted and carried somewhere. Then again I saw the glass dome of the operating room hanging over me, only now it was red-hot. Ugly faces appeared in him. A fiery rain suddenly burst out. The drops were huge, but none touched me. They fell around, raising flames. Soon the fire was raging everywhere, and monstrous creatures were rushing in it … At that moment I realized that I was surrounded by the terrible masters of this fiery world. I was desperate. I was tormented by pain, I was suffocating. I realized that I was in hell …
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On the shores of a burning lake
R. Moody in the first edition of his book writes nothing about such experiences. Only in the second, supplemented edition, does he briefly mention them in connection with the resuscitation of suicides. Maurice Rawlings, a resuscitator from Tennessee (USA), touches upon this topic more thoroughly in his book Behind the Door of Death (1978). Rawlings described several dozen such episodes.
One of the patients, J. R., was taken out of the coma for three hours. He came to life, then died again. Doctors used electroshock, a very painful procedure. during which patients usually beg to be left alone. But JR literally shouted, "Go on, doctor, go on, for Christ's sake, I don't want this hell anymore!" Later, coming to his senses, he said that he found himself in a dark area, in a crowd that stood silently on the shore of a huge lake. Instead of water, a bluish fire blazed there. There were a huge number of people here - and all with gloomy, haggard faces. Nobody was interested in J. R.'s appearance; the people watched the firestorm. The heat was like in a furnace. JR's skin was smoldering and bubbling, and there was not a drop of water around. Suddenly, a luminous figure appeared above the crowd that JR recognized as Jesus Christ. He mentally called to God,begging for help to get out of here. The request was probably heard as JR came back to life.
On the third day, the patient completely forgot about everything that he had experienced. He perceived his clinical death as a deep swoon, oblivion. Rawlings believes that the memories still remain with the patient, but have gone into the subconscious. Subsequently, this was reflected in him: J. R., who had never been a believer, turned into an exemplary Christian, much to the surprise of those close to him.
Come back and live differently
The fact that the posthumous experience is so quickly forgotten by a person, and then the person turns to religion, is characteristic of the overwhelming majority of those who have experienced clinical death, and it does not matter whether the deceased has been to heaven or hell. In his book, Rawlings describes the case of engineer Hillary, who fell into the river from a high bridge and spent almost 40 minutes under water. The people who pulled him out called the ambulance rather to clear their conscience. However, in the car, during resuscitation, Hillary suddenly woke up for everyone. His first words were: "Lord, forgive me my unbelief!" Later, the patient told the doctor that he flew through some kind of black tunnel and ended up in a truly eerie place. It was like a huge dark cave filled with snakes. They crawled over their victim, wrapped themselves around it, squeezed the chest and neck, dug into the body,causing unbearable pain. In addition to snakes, someone else's presence was felt in the cave. In the darkness, the martyr did not see whose, but the mere thought of this inspired him with real horror. And suddenly, in the midst of a nightmare, he saw a flash of light above him and heard a voice: "Come back and live differently!" Someone's invisible hands lifted the sufferer and unhooked the snake from him. The last thing Hillary heard was the angry hiss of the cave creatures who did not want to part with their prey. Returning to life, he first saw himself lying in the resuscitation car, and then everything started spinning around, and the engineer was in his body.”Someone's invisible hands raised the sufferer and unhooked the snake from him. The last thing Hillary heard was the angry hiss of the cave creatures who did not want to part with their prey. Returning to life, he first saw himself lying in the resuscitation car, and then everything started spinning around, and the engineer was in his body.”Someone's invisible hands raised the sufferer and unhooked the snake from him. The last thing Hillary heard was the angry hiss of the cave creatures who did not want to part with their prey. Returning to life, he first saw himself lying in the resuscitation car, and then everything started spinning around, and the engineer was in his body.
Three days later, Hillary, like the others who had been to hell, completely forgot his experience of death and subsequently became a deeply religious person.
Most people are in hell?
It must be admitted that there are not very many reports of such posthumous troubles. D. Osman, a cardiologist who has performed several thousand operations in India and the USA. in his recent article (2009) he talks about just one such "dark" case, which he personally witnessed.
Dr. Osman is one of those scientists who do not believe in the existence of "the next world." Everything that a person feels in a state of clinical death, the cardiologist explains as painful delirium, hallucinations, or physiological changes in the brain associated with the cessation of oxygen supply to it. However, D. Osman still singles out 11 episodes that made a strong impression on him - he did not find an explanation for them. These are, in particular, two cases with people who were blind from birth. When they came to, they described in detail the events in the operating room that had taken place during their resuscitation. And one case involves a woman from New York, a native of Italy. After the operation, barely waking up, she fell into a severe hysterics. The patient insisted that she had been to hell. where the whole sea of worms almost drowned. They penetrated all the holes of her body and crawled along the insides,causing extreme pain. Among them were snakes, whose heads looked like phalluses. One of the snakes, penetrating into her stomach, spewed poison there, which burned through the body. Hypnotherapy was used to calm the patient down. In a state of deep hypnosis, the woman told the doctors the same thing, and gave such a detailed naturalistic description that it was impossible to doubt the veracity of her words.
“I am sure that an unpleasant posthumous experience is no less, and, most likely, even much more frequent than pleasant,” Dr. Rawlings sums up his research. “It is precisely this experience that those who came out of clinical death experience without remembering anything, because an unpleasant experience, being too painful and intolerable for a person, is immediately displaced from conscious memory into the subconscious upon his return here.”
Many occultists have expressed strong opposition to this point of view. After all, this means that most people, when they die, go to hell! It would be much more correct to assume that the souls of those who did not remember anything simply did not leave the body. This is consistent with religious postulates, according to which the soul after death does not immediately part with the body, but for some time (sometimes up to several days) remains in it. Proponents of the doctrine of reincarnation generally believe that the souls of people at the time of clinical death are already in a new body - the body of an unborn baby still in the womb, that is, in complete darkness. This means that they have practically nothing to remember.
Igor Voloznev