Getting out of the physical body
Daniel D. Hume (1833–1886) of Scotland was the most outstanding medium who has ever lived on our planet. 1858 - he married a Russian citizen Alexandrina Krol. Soon they had a son, Gregory. This is what happened to Gregory in early 1887:
“Just a few days ago, returning to my home at 10 o'clock in the evening, I suddenly felt an inexplicable and some kind of special weakness. However, not wanting to go to bed, I lit a lamp, put it on the table next to the bed and, lighting a cigar from it, sat down, or rather lay down on the couch.
Before I had time to throw my head back on the cushion of the couch, all the objects around me spun around me and I felt that I was fainting, as it were, feeling a strange feeling of emptiness. Suddenly I was in the middle of the room. Surprised by such an unaccountable movement for me, I looked around me, and my surprise increased to the utmost.
I saw myself lying on the couch with a cigar in my hand!.. At first I thought that I had fallen asleep and that all this was happening to me in a dream, but I had never seen anything like this in a dream, and besides, I was fully aware of the fact that my state was a real, real, extremely intense life. And therefore, when I clearly realized that it could not be a dream, another explanation that came to my mind was that I had died.
Recalling what I had heard about the existence of spirits, I thought that I too had become a “spirit,” and all explanations of this kind of state appeared before me with a greater speed than that with which thought generally works. My whole life appeared before me as if in a formula … Awful longing and regret about my unfinished work seized me.
I went up to myself, that is, to my body, or, better to put it, to what I already considered my corpse, and was surprised to the extreme: my body was breathing!.. Moreover, I could see inside it and observe slow and weak, but even heartbeat. I saw my bright red blood flowing through the vessels.
Then I thought that it means that I had a special kind of fainting. “But people who fainted, then, waking up, do not remember anything from what happened to them during their unconscious state,” I thought. And I felt so sorry that when I came to myself, I would not be able to remember everything that I now feel and see …
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Slightly reassured that I was still alive, I asked myself how long this state of mine could last, and stopped paying attention to my second “I”, continuing my serene sleep on the couch. Looking at the lamp, I noticed that it was so close to the bed curtains that they could catch fire from it, I took hold of the lamp screw button, intending to extinguish it, but - new surprise! Although I felt the button and could even see the smallest of the molecules that make up it, only my fingers revolved around the button, but I could not act on it: I tried in vain to turn the screw.
Therefore, I began to examine and feel myself, conscious of myself in a body, but so ethereal that I could, it seems, pierce it through with my hand, and it, as far as I remember, was enveloped in something white. Then I stood up against the mirror, but instead of seeing my own reflection in it, I noticed that as I wished, the power of my sight increased to such an extent that I penetrated it through the mirror, first to the wall, and then through the wall, on that her side. I saw the inside of the paintings hanging on this wall in my neighbor's apartment, whose rooms and furniture clearly appeared before my eyes. Realizing that there was no lighting in these rooms, I, nevertheless, could see all the objects perfectly and then drew attention to a thin stream of light emanating from my epigastric region, illuminating everything around me.
I didn’t know my neighbor living through the wall with me, but I knew that at the moment he was away. And before I had time to feel the desire to be in his apartment, I found myself there. Which way?.. I don’t know, but it seemed to me that I penetrated the wall as freely, as freely as my eyes first penetrated there. In short, it was my first time in my neighbor's rooms. I examined their placement, trying to remember the details of the situation, and, going up to the library cupboard, I especially in my memory noted the titles of some of the books on those shelves that were level with my eyes.
My only desire was enough that I, without any effort on my part, was already where I was drawn.
But from that time on, my memories became extremely vague. I know that I was carried away far, very far, it seems, to Italy, but I can’t give myself an account of what I was doing there.
As if having lost all control over my thought, I followed it, being transported here and there, depending on where it was going. She carried me along with her before I had time to take possession of her: the inhabitant of the temple was now taking away the temple with her …
I woke up at 5 in the morning feeling exhausted and as if numb. I was in the same position in which I lay down on the couch in the evening, and the fingers of my hand did not drop the extinguished cigar. The lamp went out, smoking the glass. I went to bed, but for a long time I could not sleep because of the tremors that ran all over my body. Finally, sleep overtook me, and it was well past noon when I woke up.
By means of an innocent pretext I had invented, I managed to persuade our concierge to visit my neighbor's apartment with me on the same day to see "if something had happened there." And thus I made sure that the furniture, pictures and titles of books that I saw - everything was as I remembered the previous night in a way incomprehensible to me …
I, of course, did not say anything to anyone about all this, otherwise they would be considered half-witted or they would say that I had a fit of delirium tremens."
At the time of Gregory Hume, few people knew about the possibility of such "adventures" in Europe. Quite a lot has been written about the out-of-body phenomenon these days. Official science is wary of such messages, and those who are distinguished by the ability to "leave" the body, like Grigory Hume, prefer not to talk about it for now.
Leaving the body at clinical death
Clinical death is a terminal (borderline) condition in which there are no visible signs of life (cardiac activity, respiration), the functions of the central nervous system fade away, but metabolic processes in the tissues persist. It lasts several minutes, followed by biological death, in which the restoration of vital functions is impossible.
Doctors admit that clinical death is still a mystery to them. Experts have no consensus on what actually happens to a person at this time. A particularly violent controversy arises around the so-called "posthumous experience" that some people experience at the time of clinical death.
They started talking about this phenomenon in 1976 after the publication of the book by Dr. Raymond Moody "Life After Life". Moody collected testimonies from approximately 150 people who either themselves experienced clinical death or near-death conditions, or told him about the experiences of other people while dying. Some "dead" and then "resurrected" talked about the bright light, about meeting with dead relatives and friends. Others have remembered individual episodes of the Supreme Court. Some left the physical body, but remained in the physical world next to their body, or traveled to familiar places, or fell into another reality. Moody's book caused a lot of noise and confusion in the minds of both ordinary people and pundits. It turns out that the "afterlife" exists and death is only a transition to another sphere of life, perhaps a lighter one,than biological life? Moreover, Moody was not alone in his research, such studies were carried out by E. Kubler-Ross, C. Ducasse, A. Ford and others. And they came to the conclusion: there is no death.
One of the first to explain the phenomenon of "posthumous experience" was the Soviet resuscitator, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences V. A. Negovsky. “Unfortunately,” he wrote in his article “Clinical death through the eyes of a resuscitator,” “in some foreign countries (in particular, in America), a number of authors have a tendency to interpret these phenomena in a peculiar way as evidence of the existence of the other world. They rely mainly on the stories of patients about their experiences in a dying state. As arguments in favor of the afterlife, some idealistic scientists use the content of the stories of patients, which are largely similar. The argument is extremely untenable: the pathological production of a dying or reviving brain is basically the same type and cannot be different in people of different countries and peoples. After all, we are talking about the human brain. The level of evolutionary maturity of this organ is approximately the same everywhere. The structure of the human brain is one. This means that the patterns of his dying and revival are also of the same type.
There are attempts to explain other mysterious conditions in clinical death. For example, getting out of the body. A few years ago, scientists in Switzerland said they figured out how this happens. According to doctors, the source of this kind of sensation is one of the convolutions in the right side of the cerebral cortex. This gyrus, they say, collects information that comes from different parts of the brain, and forms an idea of where the body is. If the signals of several nerves go astray, then the brain paints the wrong picture, and as a result, a person can see himself from the outside.
But some of the phenomena of the "posthumous" experience to this day remain unexplained. For example, no one is able to give an intelligible answer to the question of how people who are blind from birth can describe in detail what they saw in the operating room at the time of their "death". Nevertheless, it is a fact - a survey of more than 200 blind women and men conducted by the American doctor Kennett Ring proves it.
Research into unusual conditions at the time of near-death is ongoing. Today, many scientists are inclined to believe that after the physical death of a person, his consciousness is preserved.
Nobody can confirm or deny the supporters of the theory of "life after death" or its opponents, because "… nobody returned from that country." Clinical death is not yet final death. In addition, not all those who look on the other side remember their experience. Many of the people returned by the doctors "from there" saw neither the tunnel, nor the dead relatives, nor the "luminous creature." That is, nothing at all. They did not leave their bodies and did not hear the voices of doctors.
But it should be noted that after clinical death, their attitude towards others and towards the world as a whole has undergone changes. Moreover, they have ceased to fear death, although they perceive life as a priceless gift. One of them commented on his new understanding: “Now I feel life brighter, sharper and I try to use every minute as efficiently as possible. I live and enjoy every moment. But there is no fear of death in me, if it comes, I will take it for granted."
G. Zheleznyak, A. Kozka