PureInsight | September 11, 2022, by Xiao Liu
[PureInsight.org] Since the term “near-death experience” was coined in 1975 by American MD Raymond Moody in his book “Life After Life”, many scientists have started research in this field, and studied a large number of cases.
“Near-death experience” refers to the fact that when the body is extremely weak and close to death, it will trigger a series of reactions: the pain disappears, the feeling of being detached from the body, floating upward, seeing relatives and friends who have passed away, reviewing one’s own life, traversing the dark tunnel, a bright light is seen at the end, and in the light, “love, joy, tolerance, and peace” are strongly felt, etc.
I personally heard two cases in the 1990s. One of near-death experiences was told by a classmate in the same dormitory when I was a graduate student. She returned to school after working for more than ten years. She said that when she gave birth to a child, she bleeds heavily, her soul (the Main Spirit) left her body, and then slowly floated towards a door that was opening. However, in the end, instead of walking through the door, she looked back at the doctor who was rescuing her, and then returned to her body.
Another is a story of a friend of my friend. She was also bleeding profusely during childbirth, and her main spirit left her body. She flew and flew to a very beautiful world. She was very happy and did not want to go back at all. At this time, a loving voice said to her, “You should go back, your child still needs your care.” The high level being who spoke also pushed aside the clouds and asked her to look down at the hospital. She saw that doctors were still busy rescuing her, and her husband was holding his newborn baby and praying. At this moment, her heart suddenly softened, and she flew down quickly and returned to her body.
In addition, mainland media have also published some cases of near-death experiences. For example, Quankai Liu, a doctor at Nanchang University Hospital, fell into a continuous coma due to severe hepatitis in July 1998. He had a wonderful experience in the coma. He later wrote about his near-death experience in a dissertation published in Narrative Medicine.
He wrote, “I have long been unconscious, and my thoughts seem to be detached from the body, floating, through a dark tunnel, with a red light ahead. I saw my grandmother and my father, and my grandmother gave me my favorite dried sweet potato and fried peanuts. I was ecstatic but could not stretch my hand out, as if tied by a rope. I wanted to call for help, but I could not cry out. My father threw the food into the air, and snowflakes fell in the sky in an instant. My grandmother and father were suddenly gone. I was satisfied and regretful, and I turned to chase them, drifting toward a dark but not scary intersection, where it seemed that something was blocking me and dragging me back into the harsh reality. The excitement, the joy, and the serenity of the encounters I had experienced with my loved ones all vanished without a trace.”
In May 1993, Popular Medicine published an article titled “Near-Death Experience: Mysterious and Measurable” written by a doctor from Tianjin An Ding Hospital. Ten years after the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, he and his colleagues conducted a near-death experience survey on 100 survivors of the earthquake and received 81 valid survey data, including 43 males and 38 females. Most of them were survivors of collapsed houses. Among the 81 cases studied, 47 of them had personality changes following a near-death experience.
In the survey, nearly half of the people felt that their consciousness was separated from their bodies. In mid-air or on the ceiling, he/she “saw” his/her own body. One respondent described as follows, “At that time, I felt that my body was divided into two parts, one was lying on the bed, which was an empty shell, and the other was my own body, which was lighter than the air, swaying and floating in the air, Feeling very comfortable.”
About a third of people had the peculiar feeling that they were passing through a tunnel or tunnel-like space, sometimes accompanied by some strange noise and a feeling of being pulled or squeezed. About a quarter of the investigators said that at that time, the body did not seem to belong to them, and various parts of the body were scattered in the space, and then it seemed to sink into the abyss, surrounded by darkness.
About a quarter also said they had “met” spiritual figures, mostly deceased relatives or living acquaintances or strangers who were reunited with them in another dimension. Some even went to the underworld.
More than half of the people recalled that they were not afraid. Instead, their thinking was very clear, their mood was extraordinarily calm and relieved, and there was no sense of panic. Some people even had some kind of joy or pleasure. At this time, things in life are like a movie, the scene flipped quickly, and most of them are pleasant scenes, such as childhood anecdotes, marriage and love, good work achievements, etc.
Believing that they were dead or dying was a common inner feeling among survivors. However, the longer the experience lasted, the less they believed they were actually going to die. Some people show a sense of contradiction in death, that is, they are convinced that the physical body is dead, but they still experience the joy of living in the world.
Many famous people in the world have had near-death experiences, such as former President of the Republic of China Chiang Ching-kuo, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, famous American writer Ernest Hemingway, German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, French “King of Novels” Guy de Maupassant, famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous American novelist Edgar Allan Poe, the famous British writer David Herbert Lawrence, etc.
A Dutch study published in The Lancet in 2001 asked 344 patients who had been successfully resuscitated from cardiac arrest, of whom 62 (18%) had experienced a typical near-death experience. Research has shown that people who have experienced near-death experiences are spread across different geographies, races, religions, beliefs and cultural backgrounds around the world.
According to a survey by Gallup, Inc., a well-known American statistics company, there are at least 13 million living adults in the United States alone who have had a near-death experience. If children are included, the number will be even more higher.
Feng Zhiying from Tianjin An Ding Hospital also said that it is not only those who have religious beliefs who have near-death experiences, but also those who hold atheist views do. Although East and West differ greatly in their religious and cultural traditions, the experiences of people with NDEs are largely similar.
So many people around the world have had near-death experiences, which is undoubtedly telling the world: the soul is a real existence, and other dimensions are also real existences. Death is not the end of life, and people will live in other dimensions in other ways.
Then, this also means that heaven, hell, and gods and Buddhas also exist. This may help the current mainland Chinese generations indoctrinated with atheism to think seriously about the meaning of life.
Chinese version: https://www.zhengjian.org/node/277844
(Pureinsight)