Clinical death stories of survivors of an elderly man crying. Eyewitness accounts of life after death

Have you ever wondered what happens to us after death? Is there a heaven, Valhalla, is there a reincarnation, or will we just rot in the ground? We invite you to read a few stories of the lucky ones who visited the banks of the Styx River and managed to avoid meeting death. Maybe death is not as scary as we imagine it to be?

On July 4 last year, I almost died. He flew off his motorcycle head first: there was a pneumothorax, as the clavicle pierced the upper part of the lung. There, on the side of the road, I lay and died.

At this time, I felt as if I was falling into some kind of dark pool. Everything around me was black and the world, our real world, was rapidly shrinking. It felt like I was falling into an abyss. Sounds were heard somewhere in the distance. Strange, but my heart was calm: the pain was gone, and the world just floated by.

Before my eyes there were different scenes from my past and images of people close to me, friends, family. Then I woke up ... It seemed to me that I had spent several hours in this state, but in fact only a couple of minutes had passed. You know, this incident taught me to appreciate the present.

It is difficult to describe what is really happening: there is no excitement or struggle for life. You just don't understand what's going on. You feel like something is going wrong, but you don’t understand what exactly. Everything is somehow unnatural, illusory.

The moment when you come to your senses is similar to when in the morning in a dream it seems that you woke up, brushed your teeth, made your bed and already had a cup of coffee, when you suddenly wake up in fact and wonder why you are still in bed? After all, a second ago you were drinking coffee for yourself, and now, it turns out, you are lying in bed ... It is difficult to understand whether you woke up in the real world this time.

About 2 years ago I died...and was dead for 8 minutes. It all happened because of a heroin overdose. Yes, it was clinical death. Whatever it was, it was both a terrible and pleasant feeling at the same time. It seemed to me that it didn’t matter - complete calmness and indifference to everything.

My heart was beating very fast, my whole body was covered in perspiration, everything seemed to be in slow motion. The last thing I remember before losing consciousness is the guy from the ambulance screaming: "We're losing him." After that, I took one last breath and passed out.

I woke up in the hospital a few hours later, my head was very dizzy. I could not think clearly and walk, everything was swimming before my eyes. This went on until next day. In general, this experience was not so terrible, but I would not wish anyone to experience it. And by the way, I don't use heroin anymore.

It's like the feeling when you slowly drift off to sleep. All in very bright and extremely saturated colors. It seems like this dream lasts for hours, although when I woke up, only 3 minutes had passed.

I don’t remember what was in this “dream”, but I felt boundless peace, and my soul was even joyful. When I woke up, for a few seconds it seemed to me that I was in the middle of a screaming crowd, although there was no one in the room.

After that, vision began to return. It happened gradually, you know, like in old TVs: at first, the darkness around, it snows, and then everything becomes a little clearer and brighter. The body was paralyzed from the neck down, and suddenly I began to feel how gradually the ability to move began to return to me: first the arms, then the legs, and then the whole body.

It was easy for me to navigate in space. It was hard to remember what happened to me. I could not understand who all these people around me at that moment, who am I myself? 5 minutes later everything was back to normal. All that was left was a terrible headache.

My younger brother has type 1 diabetes. When he was only 10, he went into hypoglycemic shock at night. I remember waking up to 6 doctors running up the stairs, and later there was a scream: “He stopped breathing. No pulse! They loaded him into an ambulance, and already at the hospital my parents were told what a miracle it was that they were able to resuscitate him on the way.

At the hospital, I asked my brother how he felt when he was "there." And this is what he answered me: “The sound seemed to increase, it became louder and louder, when suddenly, it suddenly subsided and I seemed to be carried, as if through the water pipes of our water park. Only there was no one around. Are we going to the water park when I get better?”

Feeling like you're immersed in deep dream(in fact, it is so), and when you wake up, your head is full of confusion. You do not understand what actually happened and why everyone around you is so concerned about your condition. I was inexplicably afraid, as if this state had deprived me of all courage. I kept asking, "What time is it?" and lost consciousness again. I don't remember anything but an unbearable feeling of tiredness, and a desire to fall asleep as soon as possible so that this nightmare would finally end.

It's like you're falling asleep. You can't even understand at what point you lost consciousness. At first, you see nothing but darkness, and this evokes fear and a feeling of complete uncertainty. And when you wake up, if you do wake up, then your head is as if in a fog.

All I felt was that I was falling into an abyss. Then I woke up and saw doctors around the hospital bed, my mother and a close friend. I felt like I was just sleeping. Slept terribly uncomfortable.

« Suddenly I had a vision that my soul had left my body and was floating above the ceiling. The body was filled with an unusual calmness. But then everything was shrouded in darkness, and only a distant spark of light loomed somewhere in the distance.". This is how the memories of a person who had a clinical death look like. What this phenomenon is, how it happens - we will describe in this article. Science and esotericism interpret this state in different ways.

Description and symptoms of the phenomenon

Clinical death - medical term, denoting the cessation of two essential conditions for maintaining human life- circulation and respiration.

Among main features states:

• Loss of consciousness occurs within seconds of apnea and asystole;
• The brain continues to live and work;
• The pupils dilate and do not constrict when exposed to light. This happens due to degeneration of the nerve responsible for the motor activity of the organs of vision;
• There is no pulse;
• Body temperature is maintained at a normal level of 36.6 degrees;
• The normal course of metabolism continues.

Until the 20th century, the presence of the above signs was enough to recognize a person as dead. However, the successes of medicine, including extreme medicine, have done their job.

Now you can literally pull a person out of the clutches of death through the use of cardiopulmonary ventilation, defibrillation and the introduction of significant doses of adrenaline into the body.

In this video, reporter Natalya Tkacheva will tell you what eyewitnesses who have experienced clinical death feel, and will show some rather rare shots:

Duration of clinical death

The vast majority of tissues and organs are able to survive the cessation of blood circulation for quite a long time. So, the body below the heart is able to survive after it stops for half an hour. Bones, tendons and skin can be successfully rehabilitated after 8-12 hours.

The brain is the most oxygen-sensitive organ. If it is damaged, exit from the transition state becomes impossible, even if it was possible to bring blood circulation and the heart back to normal.

According to pathophysiologist Vladimir Negovsky, there is two stages of reversible brain death:

1. The first one is about five minutes long. During this period, the higher departments of the central nervous system still retain the heat of life even in the complete absence of oxygen;
2. After a few minutes after circulatory arrest, the cerebral cortex dies. But the lifespan of the thinking organ can be significantly increased if the temperature of the human body is artificially lowered. A similar effect occurs when an electric shock or water enters the respiratory tract.

Causes of clinical death

The following factors can lead to a transitional state between life and death:

1. Cardiac arrest and, as a result, blood circulation. Vital organs cease to receive oxygen with the blood and die;
2. Too much physical activity;
3. The body's response to stress and nervous breakdown;
4. The consequence of anaphylactic shock is a rapid increase in the sensitivity of the body under the influence of an allergen;
5. Violation of the lungs or blockage of the airways under the influence of various causes (including suffocation);
6. Tissue damage as a result of extensive burns, severe wounds or strong electric shock;
7. Poisoning with toxic substances;
8. Chronic ailments affecting the circulatory or respiratory organs;
9. Cases of violent death;
10. Vascular spasms.

Regardless of the true cause of the critical condition, assistance to the victim must be provided immediately.

Revitalization activities

First aid to save a dying person includes the following actions:

1. You need to make sure that all signs of a borderline condition are present. You can not start the implementation of activities if the person is still conscious;
2. Perform a precordial punch on the chest (in the region of the heart);
3. Lay the victim on a hard and hard floor;
4. Place your palm on your forehead and press lightly to raise your chin;
5. If there are foreign objects in the mouth (for example, a denture), it is necessary to remove them from there;
6. Pinch the nose of the rescued person with your fingers and blow air into his mouth approximately every 5 seconds;
7. Perform cardiac massage. Put your hands one on top of the other in the lower part of the chest and make a slight pressure, pressing with the whole body weight. The arms at the elbows should not bend. The frequency of manipulations is about 2 for every 3 seconds;
8. Call an ambulance, state the patient's condition and the rescue measures taken.

What did people who survived clinical death see?

Survivors of clinical death tell about unusual things that happened to them one step away from death.

On the verge of death, the following picture appears to the human eye:

• Exacerbation of the sensitivity of all organs;
• Memory greedily catches every little thing;
• The human spirit leaves the mortal body and indifferently observes what is happening;
• Auditory hallucinations: there is a feeling that someone is calling the dying person;
• Complete emotional and nervous calm;
• In the mind, as if in a filmstrip, the brightest and most memorable moments of life fly by;
• Vision of clots of light, beckoning the observer;
• Feeling of falling into a parallel reality;
• Contemplation of a tunnel with light looming in the distance.

The similarity of the stories of thousands different people, who literally visited the next world, gives ground for the development of the violent fantasy of esotericists.

Believers perceive these testimonies in a religious way. To a set of typical memories, they - intentionally or not - add biblical stories.

Scientific explanation of afterlife memories

Supporters of the occult and religious knowledge perceive stories about the light at the end of the tunnel as undeniable evidence of an afterlife. But even the most vivid stories of patients do not make any impression on scientists.

From point of view modern science, the whole set of memories can be explained from a logical point of view:

• The sensation of flight, light reflections and sounds occurs even before clinical death, immediately after the cessation of blood circulation. Directly in the transitional state, a person cannot feel anything;
• The feeling of peace and tranquility that some people speak of indicates an increase in the concentration of serotonin in the body;
• A rapid decrease in the oxygen content in the tissues leads to a deterioration in the functions of the visual system. The brain understands the "picture" only from the center of the retina. A hallucination appears in the form of a tunnel with a light at its end;
• A drop in glucose levels immediately after cardiac arrest can spur the activity of higher brain regions for several seconds. There are very colorful images and music that have nothing to do with reality.

A condition that lasts for several minutes after stopping breathing and heartbeat is called clinical death. What kind of phenomenon it was, it became known only a few decades ago. During this time, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved. The true essence of the phenomenon remains the subject of a fierce dispute between occultists, esotericists and scientists.

Video about recorded cases of clinical death

In this report, Artem Morozov will talk about clinical death, and several eyewitnesses who survived it will also be shown:

Rostislav Efremov was not even a year old, and he was already on the verge of life and death. Doctors could not do anything about the consequences of bilateral pneumonia. Relatives already wanted to say goodbye to Rostislav, but the grandmother's pleas were heard. Rostislav survived clinical death. The most interesting thing is that years later Rostislav remembers this event in great detail.

Since childhood, Rostislav has not cut his hair. Once he tried to do this, but he became very ill. After that, he did not experiment and began to live as before.

Another case is the case of Eduard Serebryakov. He survived clinical death and completely changed. He says that only people who have survived stressful situation and who turned out to be alive, new paths open up. It happened on May 14, 1997. Edward went by car as usual. But approaching the railway track, he suddenly realized that the brakes were not working. It turns out that he had ill-wishers who cut the brake hoses and the brakes failed. As a result, Edward began to slow down with everything he could, including the handbrake. His car after the maneuver stopped right in the middle of the railway tracks. The alarm worked. All doors were closed. A moment later, he saw that the train was rushing towards him. He thought that this was his last day. At that moment, time stopped for him. He thought that he would be mutilated. In order to try to somehow protect himself, he intuitively turned in the direction of departure. Turned his back on the train, jumped back. He hoped that the blow would fly him out. And at that moment there was a blow ...

At that very moment, Edward saw his own funeral. He saw how all the relatives were saying goodbye to him and it was as if he himself was lying in a coffin. He saw the funeral as if from the outside, but at the same time he felt a strong bliss. He understood now why people, if they were there, do not want to return to earth. It is not clear how long this went on, but after a moment he returned to his body again. The engineer began to pull at him and ask if he was alive.

But after this event, miracles did not stop. After the operation, Sergei remained alive. But now before any important event he began to write poetry spontaneously. Moreover, the poems were born from his head by themselves, he just barely had time to write them down. The most interesting thing is that these simple verses accurately reflected the upcoming disaster or some kind of extraordinary event.

After a state of clinical death, people return completely different. They can now even predict the future. For example, a resuscitator noted that after the return of one of his patients, he began to ask about the second son in the family. But how could this be, because there was only one child in the family. Two years later, a boy was born. How could a person know about his future?

The next story is the story of Nora Zurabyan. This girl suffered a clinical death at the age of six. Once, at the age of six, Nora was returning home from school. She could barely walk, a terrible pain gripped her stomach. The girl was immediately taken away by an ambulance. Doctors warned relatives that anything could happen as a result of the operation. The appendicitis was very advanced.

Indeed, during the operation, Nora's heart stopped for a moment. At that moment, she was watching herself as if from the side. It was a state of complete peace and tranquility. I didn't even want to go back to my body. But after that, the girl was pulled into a long, dark tunnel, at the end of which one could see the light. After that, the girl went to a large green island, where she was met by an unknown man. The man said that now Nora will see the future.

Then Nora began to slowly sink into her body. She came back to life.

A few years later, at the age of nine, Nora saw weird dream, in which on the door of her house there was an image of the mother of the Virgin. She told this dream to her mother and explained that their house was in a holy place. If you walk around this house seven times, light candles, then healing and a miracle can happen.

When the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan began, my father began to excavate in the basement. As a result, he found holy things - stone crosses of khachkars, which were sacred.

Since then, these stones have been standing in the courtyard of Nora's house, and this place has been called sacred. People come to this place and get healed. Since then, the girl began to notice strange abilities in herself. For example, she could see the diseased organs of a person, predict his future.

According to the observations of scientists, a person uses his abilities only by a few percent. The rest of his abilities are simply not used and stored for the time being. Clinical death is a powerful shake-up of the whole organism, and perhaps after that the dormant abilities of a person begin to work at full capacity.

During clinical death, the so-called reboot of the brain occurs. As a result of this, that part of the brain that we inherited from animals is activated.

Scientists tested the state of clinical death on animals. So, at the time of the death of a cat, a thermal imager was directed at it, and at the very moment of death, the cerebral cortex flashed with bright light on the thermal imager. This could indicate that the inhibitory neurons stopped blocking the excited neurons. At the moment when such an unlocking of the system occurs, it becomes possible to turn on brain functions that were not there, the brain starts up in full mode, and a person may acquire abilities that can be called supernatural. Perhaps all the secrets of psychics lie in the fact that their brain is working at full capacity.

Case three - clinical death of Ilyas Ibragimov

Many people who have experienced clinical death talk about seeing their dead relatives after death. An interesting incident happened to Ilyas Ibragimov. One day, his relatives asked him to take on a job in their subordination distant relative. This man was already in prison, was a drug addict and did not represent anything good from himself. Ilyas resisted this idea for a long time and did not want to hire him. But still it happened.

On the very first day, the worst thing that could happen happened. The drug addict attacked Ilyas and began to choke him with a pillow. After that, he stuck a knife in the man's neck and thought he was dead.

In fact, it was so, Ilyas was in a state of clinical death. His soul was nearby and calmly watched how the drug addict rummages through the nightstands in search of money.

After that, Ilyas saw a long dark tunnel, along which he went. After that, he saw his dead relatives. The deceased grandfather told the man that it was not yet time for him to come here and at the same second Ilyas returned to his body.

At this time, the criminal noticed that Ilyas came to life and attacked him again. He snatched the knife from Ilyas' hands and tried to plunge it into his heart. There are eyewitnesses who saw the knife bent, and there was no damage to the man's body at that moment. In theory, the knife was supposed to pierce the heart, but this did not happen. It was a miracle. At that moment, Ilyas began to fight like never before. It awakened inhuman strength. That is why he survived.

After leaving the hospital, Ilyas discovered the real psychic abilities in himself. Now he can communicate with the souls of the dead, began to help heal the sick. Until now, after clinical death, Ilyas can fly in his sleep.

Experiences of Konstantin Korotkov on clinical death

The scientist Konstantin Korotkov decided to use experiments to make sure that consciousness exists after the death of the body. He repeatedly heard stories about the exit of the soul from the body, about death, about how mediums communicate with the souls of the dead. But he was interested in what actually happens to consciousness after the death of a person.

To do this, he began to conduct special experiments at the institute. The corpses of people were brought to the institute and it was possible to examine hundreds of examples of how the body dead man behave after death.

The scientist was interested in how human energy behaves, how it changes after death. And immediately after death, the energy of a person is almost the same as when he was alive. But the most amazing thing happens next. The energy does not gradually decrease. And there are jumps. These are curves with peaks, ups and downs.

Energy reaches its maximum peak a few hours after death.

As a result, the scientist identified three curves that describe three different groups of people who died. The first curve is quite calm and uniform. Immediately after the death of a person, it subsides and is at the same level. These are people who died quite predictable deaths, such as the elderly or those who knew they would die as a result of an illness.

The second group of curves is a sharp activity after a few hours after death. These are people who died suddenly, for example, as a result of an accident and so on. After some time, the curve gradually decreases and is also at the same level. But the most interesting is the third kind of curve. These are people who died a violent death or suicide. In this case, there is a decline and rise on the curve almost all the time. These are large fluctuations in the curve. Perhaps the soul of the suicide at this time really walks somewhere near the body.

Case four - clinical death of Vyacheslav Klimov

Vyacheslav Klimov is a researcher of anomalous phenomena. He talks about the fact that the ancient Vedas had such a concept of our universe as 36 spaces. Ancient people had many psychic abilities. But over the years, these abilities have atrophied.

Vyacheslav himself knows firsthand about psychic abilities. The fact is that he himself experienced clinical death and after that he began to feel the subtle world around him very keenly.

After clinical death, Vyacheslav began to pay more attention to his inner world, he began to study our world more. He delved into self-knowledge. Perhaps this happens to all people who have experienced such a state.

"Man is mortal, but his main trouble is that he is suddenly mortal," these words, put into Woland's mouth by Bulgakov, perfectly describe the feelings of most people. Probably, there is no person who would not be afraid of death. But along with the big death, there is a small death - clinical. What is it, why people who have experienced clinical death often see the divine light and is it not a delayed path to paradise - in the material of the site.

Clinical death from the point of view of medicine

The problems of studying clinical death as a borderline state between life and death remain one of the most important in modern medicine. Unraveling many of its mysteries is also difficult because many people who have experienced clinical death do not fully recover, and more than half of patients with a similar condition cannot be resuscitated, and they die for real - biologically.

So, clinical death is a condition accompanied by cardiac arrest, or asystole (a condition in which various parts of the heart stop contracting first, and then cardiac arrest occurs), respiratory arrest and deep, or beyond, cerebral coma. With the first two points, everything is clear, but about whom it is worth explaining in more detail. Usually doctors in Russia use the so-called Glasgow scale. According to the 15-point system, the reaction of opening the eyes, as well as motor and speech reactions, is evaluated. 15 points on this scale correspond to clear consciousness, and the minimum score - 3, when the brain does not respond to any kind of external influence, corresponds to transcendental coma.

After stopping breathing and cardiac activity, a person does not die immediately. Almost instantly, consciousness is turned off, because the brain does not receive oxygen and its oxygen starvation sets in. But nevertheless, in a short period of time, from three to six minutes, he can still be saved. Approximately three minutes after breathing stops, cell death begins in the cerebral cortex, the so-called decortication. The cerebral cortex is responsible for higher nervous activity and, after decortication, resuscitation measures, although they can be successful, a person can be doomed to a vegetative existence.

After a few minutes, cells of other parts of the brain begin to die - in the thalamus, hippocampus, cerebral hemispheres. The state in which all parts of the brain have lost functional neurons is called decerebration and actually corresponds to the concept of biological death. That is, the revival of people after decerebration is in principle possible, but a person will be doomed for the rest of his life to be on artificial lung ventilation and other life-sustaining procedures for a long time.

The fact is that the vital (vital - site) centers are located in the medulla oblongata, which regulates breathing, heartbeat, cardiovascular tone, as well as unconditioned reflexes like sneezing. With oxygen starvation, the medulla oblongata, which is actually a continuation of the spinal cord, dies one of the last parts of the brain. However, although the vital centers may not be damaged, by then decortication will have set in, making it impossible to return to normal life.

Other human organs, such as the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys, can go much longer without oxygen. Therefore, one should not be surprised at the transplantation, for example, of kidneys taken from a patient with an already brain dead. Despite the death of the brain, the kidneys are still in working condition for some time. And the muscles and cells of the intestine live without oxygen for six hours.

Currently, methods have been developed that allow increasing the duration of clinical death up to two hours. This effect is achieved with the help of hypothermia, that is, artificial cooling of the body.

As a rule (unless, of course, it happens in a clinic under the supervision of doctors), it is quite difficult to determine exactly when the cardiac arrest occurred. According to current regulations, doctors are required to carry out resuscitation measures: heart massage, artificial respiration for 30 minutes from the start. If during this time it was not possible to resuscitate the patient, then biological death is stated.

However, there are several signs of biological death that appear as early as 10–15 minutes after brain death. First, Beloglazov's symptom appears (when pressing on the eyeball, the pupil becomes similar to a cat's), and then the cornea of ​​​​the eyes dries up. If these symptoms are present, resuscitation is not carried out.

How many people safely survive clinical death

It may seem that most people who find themselves in a state of clinical death come out of it safely. However, this is not the case, only three to four percent of patients can be resuscitated, after which they return to normal life and do not suffer from any mental disorders or loss of body functions.

Another six to seven percent of patients, being resuscitated, nevertheless do not recover to the end, suffer from various brain lesions. The vast majority of patients die.

This sad statistic is largely due to two reasons. The first of them - clinical death can occur not under the supervision of doctors, but, for example, in the country, from where the nearest hospital is at least half an hour away. In this case, the doctors will come when it will be impossible to save the person. Sometimes it is impossible to timely defibrillate when ventricular fibrillation occurs.

The second reason is the nature of body lesions in clinical death. When it comes to massive blood loss, resuscitation is almost always unsuccessful. The same applies to critical myocardial damage in a heart attack.

For example, if more than 40 percent of the myocardium is affected as a result of blockage of one of the coronary arteries, death is inevitable, because the body cannot live without heart muscles, no matter what resuscitation measures are taken.

Thus, it is possible to increase the survival rate in case of clinical death mainly by equipping crowded places with defibrillators, as well as by organizing flying ambulance crews in hard-to-reach areas.

Clinical death for patients

If clinical death for doctors is an urgent condition in which it is necessary to urgently resort to resuscitation, then for patients it often seems like a road to the bright world. Many near-death survivors have reported seeing light at the end of a tunnel, some meeting their long-dead relatives, others looking at the earth from a bird's eye view.

“I had a light (yes, I know how it sounds), and I seemed to see everything from the outside. It was bliss, or something. No pain for the first time in so much time. someone else's life and now I just slide back into my skin, my life - the only one that I feel comfortable in. It is a little tight, but it is a pleasant tightness, like a worn pair of jeans that you have been wearing for years, "says Lydia, one of the patients who underwent clinical death.

It is this feature of clinical death, its ability to cause vivid images is still the subject of much controversy. From a purely scientific point of view, what is happening is described quite simply: brain hypoxia occurs, which leads to hallucinations in the actual absence of consciousness. What kind of images arise in a person in this state is a strictly individual question. The mechanism for the occurrence of hallucinations has not yet been fully elucidated.

At one time, the endorphin theory was very popular. According to her, much of what people experience near death can be attributed to the release of endorphins due to extreme stress. Since endorphins are responsible for receiving pleasure, and in particular even for orgasm, it is easy to guess that many people who survived clinical death considered after it ordinary life just a burdensome routine. However, in last years this theory was debunked because researchers found no evidence that endorphins are released during near-death experiences.

There is also a religious point of view. As, however, in any cases that are inexplicable from the standpoint of modern science. Many people (there are scientists among them) tend to believe that after death a person goes to heaven or hell, and the hallucinations that survivors of near-death experience saw are only proof that hell or heaven exists, like the afterlife in general. It is extremely difficult to give any assessment to these views.

Nevertheless, not all people experienced heavenly bliss during clinical death.

“I suffered clinical death twice in less than one month. I didn’t see anything. When they returned, I realized that I was nowhere, in oblivion. I didn’t have anything there. I concluded that you get rid of everything there by completely losing yourself, probably , along with the soul. Now death does not really bother me, but I enjoy life, "accountant Andrey cites his experience.

In general, studies have shown that at the time of human death, the body loses little in weight (literally a few grams). Adherents of religions hastened to assure mankind that at this moment from human body the soul separates. However, the scientific approach says that the weight of the human body changes due to chemical processes occurring in the brain at the time of death.

Doctor's opinion

Current standards dictate resuscitation within 30 minutes of the last heartbeat. Resuscitation stops when the human brain dies, namely on registration on the EEG. I have personally resuscitated a patient once who went into cardiac arrest. In my opinion, the stories of people who have experienced clinical death are, in most cases, a myth or fiction. I have never heard such stories from patients of our medical institution. As well as there were no such stories from colleagues.

Moreover, people tend to call clinical death completely different conditions. It is possible that the people who allegedly had it did not actually die, they just had a syncopal state, that is, fainting.

Cardiovascular diseases remain the main cause that leads to clinical death (as well as, in fact, to death in general). Generally speaking, such statistics are not kept, but it must be clearly understood that clinical death occurs first, and then biological. Since the first place in mortality in Russia is occupied by diseases of the heart and blood vessels, it is logical to assume that they most often lead to clinical death.

Dmitry Yeletskov

anesthesiologist-resuscitator, Volgograd

One way or another, the phenomenon of near-death experiences deserves careful study. And it is quite difficult for scientists, because in addition to the fact that it is necessary to establish which chemical processes in the brain lead to the appearance of certain hallucinations, it is also necessary to distinguish truth from fiction.

The light and the tunnel is a fairly popular perception of death, but, as Rachel Neuver discovered, many other strange experiences can be found in the reports. In 2011, Mr. A, a 57-year-old social worker from England, was taken to Southampton General Hospital after suffering a heart attack at work. Medics were just inserting an inguinal catheter into him when his heart stopped. The brain stopped receiving oxygen, and Mr. A died.

Rachel Neuver

Despite this, he remembers what happened next. Medics used an automated external defibrillator to try to restart the heart. Mister A heard a mechanical voice say twice, "Discharge." Between these words he raised his head and saw strange woman, which beckoned him to her from the corner of the room, under the ceiling. He joined her, leaving his body. “I felt that she knew me and that I could trust her, and I knew that she was there for some reason, but I didn’t know for what reason,” Mr. A later recalled, “the next second I was already next to her and looked down at himself, saw a nurse and another man with a bald head.

Hospital records later confirmed Mr. A's words. Mr. A's descriptions of the people in the room and those he did not see before he passed out, and their actions were also accurate. He was describing events that took place within three minutes of his clinical death, which, according to our knowledge of biology, he should have had no idea about.

The story of Mr. A, described in the journal Resuscitation, is one of many in which people share their near-death experiences. Until now, researchers did not assume that when the heart stops beating and stops the blood supply to the brain, consciousness does not go out immediately. At this time, the person is actually dead - although as we learn more about death, we begin to understand that in some cases death can be reversible. For many years, those who returned from this incomprehensible state shared their memories of this event. Doctors largely ignored these stories, believing them to be hallucinations. Researchers are still reluctant to delve into the study of near-death experience, mainly because they have to study something that is beyond the reach of scientific research.

But Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and head of critical care research at NYU School of Medicine, along with colleagues from 17 institutions in the US and UK, wanted to do away with the assumptions about what people experience or don't experience on their deathbed. This is possible, he believes, if we collect scientific data about the last minutes of life. For four years, he and his colleagues analyzed information on more than 2,000 patients who survived cardiac arrest.

Parnia and his colleagues were able to interview 101 of them. “The goal is to try to understand their psychological experience of death first,” says Parnia, “and then if there are people who claim to remember their feelings after death, we have to determine if this is true.”

Seven Tastes of Death

It turned out that Mr. A was not the only patient who could remember something about his death. Almost 50% of the participants in the study also remembered something, but unlike Mr. A and another woman whose out-of-body adventures could be verified, the memories of other patients were not related to the real events that took place at the time of their death.

Instead, they told fairy tales or hallucinatory stories, which Parnia and his coauthors categorize into seven main themes. “Most of them were not consistent in describing what is called experience imminent death, says Parnia, “the psychic experience of death seems to be much broader than previously thought.”

Here are the seven topics:

• Fear
• Animals or plants
• Bright light
• Violence and persecution
• deja vu
• Family

Description of events after cardiac arrest

These mental experiences range from fear to bliss. There were those who reported feeling fear or suffering persecution. “I had to go through the ceremony ... and at the ceremony they burned me,” said one patient, “there were four people with me, and depending on who lied and who told the truth, he died or came back to life ... I I saw men in coffins buried in an upright position. He also recalled how he was "dragged into the depths."

Others, however, experienced the opposite, with 22% reporting a feeling of "peace and tranquility." Some have seen living beings: "All plants, no flowers" or "Lions and tigers"; while others basked in bright lights or reunited with family. Some of them reported a strong sense of déjà vu: "I knew what people were going to do before they did it." Heightened senses, a distorted perception of the passage of time, and a feeling of disconnection from the body were also among the sensations reported by near-death survivors.

“It is very clear that people experience something while they are dead,” Parnia says, and argues that people actually prefer to interpret these experiences depending on their environment and existing beliefs. Someone living in India might come back from the dead and say they saw Krishna, while someone in the US Midwest might experience the same thing but claim to have seen God. “If a father in the Midwest says to a child: “When we die, you will see Jesus, and he will be full of love and compassion,” then the child, of course, will see this, says Parnia, “and when he returns from the other world, he will say:“ Oh dad, you're right, I definitely saw Jesus!” It would be fair to admit that this is true. You don't know what God is. I don't know what God is. Well, apart from the fact that this is a man with a white beard, as he is usually portrayed.

"All these things: soul, heaven and hell - I have no idea what they mean, and there are probably thousands and thousands of interpretations based on where you were born and what surrounds you," he continues. “It is important to move from the realm of religious teachings to objectivity.”

Common cases

So far, a team of scientists has not identified any patterns in the memories of those who returned from the other world. There is no explanation why some people experience fear while others report euphoria. Parnia also points out that an increasing number of people are experiencing near-death experiences. For many people, the memories are almost certainly caused by cerebral edema that occurs after cardiac arrest, or by heavy sedatives administered to patients in hospitals. Even if people do not explicitly remember their death, it can, however, affect them on a subconscious level. Some lose their fear of death and become altruistic towards people, while others develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

Parnia and his colleagues are already planning further studies to try to resolve some of these questions. They also hope that their work will help expand traditional notions of death. They think that death should be considered as a subject of study - just like any other objects or phenomena. “Any objective thinker would agree that further research in this area is needed,” says Parnia, “and we have the tools and the technology. It's time to do it."