News, Near-death survivor: 'I went someplace else' (phenomenon, lights, vision)

[JD59]

NEWTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- For Laura Geraghty, April 1, 2009, started out just as any other day. It was sunny but cool, she remembers.

The mother of two, also a grandmother, was at her job, driving a school bus for the Newton Public School District in suburban Boston, Massachusetts.

Doctor says near-death experiences are in the mind - CNN.com

[Steve Bagu]

Hi John...how you doing? well I hope.

Fasinating article. I do believe there is a possibility of truth involved.

There are bound to be skeptics as usual but to a person who has experienced something unusal similiar will respond differently.

I have had a few surgerys in the last 20 yrs (under the knife) and every time I was brought too the result was the same except for the last one a yr ago last Aug when I had spinal surgery.

Later on asked my provider if there was any problem during the procedure...he looked on the computer and replied NONE.

Reason for my asking was that in the past they patted my face lightly and called my name...asking if I was okay and my reply was always the same "was it a boy or a girl"? and the nurse laughed.

This time things were different. There was a empty space and someone was calling many peoples names like a roll call of sorts untill my name Stephen was called and I woke up without asking the baby thing. I am not paranoid or anything but wondering as I've a procedure scheduled in mid Jan of 2010.

Will update anything unusual after that date if I'm still around.

Steve

[Rafius]

Was this her?


YouTube - Woman Bus Driver Crash

[HonuMan]

I find these NDE experiences quite interesting. I don't believe in the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God and the afterlife, so I have no vested interest in looking for evidence that supports it. I have no idea whether whether personality survives the body after death. We currently don't know any mechanism by which it could occur, but there's enough anecdotal evidence in the form of hauntings and reincarnation stories that I don't rule it out.

The doctor in the article says that what happens during an NDE is the same as what happens when people faint. I've never experienced an NDE, but I've fainted several times in my life, and I never experienced tunnel vision, bright lights, a long tunnel, or dead relatives. There's a feeling of nausea, a buzzing in my ears, then fading vison, then vague awareness of sounds, then confusion, then a return to full consciousness. On one occasion, I dreamed. What about others of you who have fainted?

One argument made against NDEs being anything other than hallucinations is that surgeons can induce them by stimulating a particular regon of the brain. The counter to that is that surgeons can also induce visual and auditory hallucinations by stimulating other regions of the brain, but that doesn't mean that everything we see and hear is illusion.

I've also wondered how the classic NDE could be selected for by evolution (and I do accept evolution as a proven fact). From what I understand, NDEs are a pretty rare phenomenon, and in the days before modern medicine, I suspect few people were revived from the brink of death. I'd be interested to hear theories on that.