Some people who were near death reported that at this moment they left the physical body, flew around and observed scenes in the real world near their body or at a considerable distance from it.
In some cases, what they saw has been confirmed. Experts who study near-death experiences almost always try to determine whether a person could see these events or objects in the usual way, without leaving the body.
Such incidents are the most significant evidence that these are not hallucinations, but genuine perceptions. The events described were confirmed during the audit. In some cases, patients see scenes not only in our world, but also talking or meeting with beings from the other world.
Here are three of dozens of cases collected by researcher Yana Holden, a professor at the University of North Texas who studies NDEs.
1. The patient observes an unusual habit of the doctor
Al Sullivan recounted this story during a meeting of the International Association for the Study of Near-Death Experiences in Connecticut in 1990, two years after the near-death experience.
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During the emergency coronary bypass surgery at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, he clearly felt that he was leaving his body. In his report, he wrote that he "climbed to a place that looks like an amphitheater."
He saw the other world, his deceased brother-in-law and mother were there, and at the same time he could look back and see the earthly world. He saw his body with a slit chest and a naked heart.
“I saw my surgeon, who explained to me some time ago what he would do during the operation. He looked confused. I thought he was waving his arms like he was trying to take off."
It was this phrase that struck cardiologist Anthony Lazal, who considered the rest of the story to be a medication-induced hallucination. Dr. Hiroyoshi Takata did have a habit of waving his elbows, as Sullivan described. He tried not to touch anything after washing his hands before the operation.
Bruce Grayson, a near-death researcher, spoke to Dr. Lazala and Dr. Takata in 1997 to test the case. Takata confirmed that he has this habit. Dr. Lazala confirmed that Sullivan told him about his experience, and that Takata's habit of waving his arms is indeed very unusual, which other surgeons do not. Grayson also found out that this happened after Sullivan's anesthesia, when, by all medical parameters, he was unconscious.
2. The brother who died
Francis Power Cobb described the following incident in his Peak at Darien 1882 on page 297.
“The dying woman said that she saw one by one her three brothers, who had died long ago, and then saw the fourth brother, who, as eyewitnesses believed, lived in India. His name, mentioned among the dead brothers, caused such horror in one of the women present that she ran out of the room. After some time, a letter came, announcing the death of his younger brother in India, he died shortly before the death of his sister.
Near-death researchers have reported other similar cases.
3. The victim in the plane crash sees events that cannot be seen from the crash site
Military doctor X, who worked in France during the First World War, flew out to treat the wounded pilot. Shortly after takeoff, the doctor's plane crashed. The crash site was not visible from the hangars, and the hangars could not be seen from the crash site.
The doctor's words were conveyed by Lieutenant Frederick John Marrian Stratton, professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge in 1957 in an article "Out-of-Body Experience Combined with Extrasensory Perception" published in the journal of the Society of Parapsychology.
“When I was over my body, I could see a lot of activities in the hangars, an ambulance leaving the hangar in which it was located. When she drove out a distance equal to the length of the car, the engine stopped and I saw the chauffeur jump out and pull the starter handle. Then he rushed to the crash site."
“While this little episode was going on, my orderly ran out of the next room and jumped into the back door of the ambulance. Then the ambulance stopped again, but this time it was at the request of the orderly. He jumped out, rushed to the medical ward, took some additional medicines and got into the ambulance, which resumed the movement interrupted twice.
At the hospital, Dr. X told the officer about this. He wrote it down and found out that such an incident actually happened with the ambulance.
By the time Stratton studied the case, the officer and other witnesses who could corroborate this information were already dead or difficult to find. This was reported by Bruce Grayson, Ian Stevenson, and Emily Williams Cook in "Near-Death Experiments Prove Life After Death?" Published in the Journal of Scientific Research in 1998.