NDE's

[Edited by an admin to limit the size of the extract from the article, as well as to properly source and quote it]

Most of the members here will be (probably by now) familiar with the arguments centred around the cause of 'near death' and 'out of body experiences' during surgery. The perennial "sceptics" amongst those, still flatly refuse to accept that the mind can function without a brain, even in spite of such persuasive cases as that of Pam Reynolds, which has been extensively discussed.

"Reynolds was the victim of anaesthesia awareness," they continue to assert, even though there is not a shred of evidence to support such a claim, nor have her surgeons ever entertained such a possibility, simply because of the extreme level and depth of anaesthesia she was subjected to. Furthermore, the precise monitoring of her brain throughout her operation revealed nothing at all untoward.

The actual reality of (real) anaesthesia awareness can be glimpsed in this report from Canadian Donna Penner, who experienced a terrifying case of awareness during surgery and also a brief near death experience. Sceptics should note the extreme difference between the two experiences.

Waking up under the surgeon's knife:

Canadian Donna Penner was relaxed at the prospect of abdominal surgery - until she woke up just before the surgeon made his first incision. She describes how she survived the excruciating pain of being operated on while awake.

In 2008, I was booked in for an exploratory laparoscopy at a hospital in my home province of Manitoba in Canada. I was 44 and I had been experiencing heavy bleeding during my periods.

I'd had a general anaesthetic before and I knew I was supposed to have one for this procedure. I'd never had a problem with them, but when we got to the hospital I found myself feeling quite anxious.

[...]

When I woke up I could still hear the sounds in the operating room. I could hear the staff banging and clanging and the machines going - the monitors and that kind of thing. I thought, "Oh good, it's over, it's done."

[...]

They were moving around and doing their things and then all of a sudden I heard him say, "Scalpel please." I just froze. I thought, "What did I just hear?"

There was nothing I could do.

[Edited by an admin to provide proper sourcing, to limit the size of the extract from the article, and to properly quote the extract]

Dr Rajiv Parti was chief anaesthetist at Bakersfield Heart Hospital in California when he experienced exactly the same phenomenon that had been reported to him many times from patients under his care. He outlines the experience of someone he calls 'The Frozen Man' below, along with his own out of body experience during an operation to save his life from a severe infection (sepsis). 

Sceptics should bear in mind Parti's previous scepticism and 'conversion' after actually having the experience himself. 

From the 19 November 2016 Daily Mail Online article authored by Dr Rajiv Parti himself, Rajiv Parti dismissed patients who'd had out-of-body experiences until HE went under the knife:

Are you ready?’ asked the surgeon. He waved his gloved hand at the anaesthetist, and I was asleep before I could answer.

Was it over? Was the surgery already over? I felt myself zooming straight up, as if in a lift. It was the same feeling you get in the pit of the stomach when you’re rocketing to the 20th floor of a skyscraper.

Slowly, my consciousness began to return: I could see the ceiling approaching, its glossy surface slowly getting closer.

Then I looked down and saw my own abdomen, now with several incisions. I heard the anaesthetist make an off-colour joke. I won’t repeat it, but everyone in the operating theatre laughed, including me.

But where was I? For a few moments, I froze with fright, worried that whatever was holding me up on the ceiling would suddenly let me drop. Eventually, though, I relaxed, watching in rapt amazement as the surgeons and nurses worked on my body.

‘Is that really me, or is this really me?’ I wondered. ‘How can I be in both places at once?’

[Edit: This is an English translation of an interview of Professor Wilfried Kuhn (image here), conducted by Susanne Wiedemann of the Main Post newspaper in Germany. Heartfelt thanks to Ms. Wiedemann for her kind efforts in obtaining permission from the Main Post and Professor Kuhn to post this translation in full. -- Doug]

http://www.mainpost.de/regional/schweinf...42,7386290

Death is not the End

by Susanne Wiedemann

Professor Wilfried Kuhn, is chief physician at the Neurological Clinic in the Leopoldina Hospital in Schweinfurt, and has worked there for over 20 years.  He has an interest in the borderline between science and spirituality. In 1977 he read Dr Raymond Moody's book "Life After Life," the reports of people who had been clinically dead and were revived to speak of their experiences.  These people typically saw themselves lying on the operating table, watching doctors fight to save their lives, experienced passing through a tunnel towards a bright light sometimes accompanied by or meeting deceased relatives.  And they returned because they were told their life's work was not finished. 

Sceptics say it's 'esoteric nonsense,' all medically explainable as hallucinations and brain processes.  For Kuhn, however, near-death experiences are an indication that consciousness can exist without matter. He has studied the phenomenon for many years and in his opinion, they cannot be fully explained neurobiologically. 

Question: Do you believe in a life after death?

Kuhn: Yes, definitely.  I do not want to attribute this to just the phenomenon of near-death experience, though.  Objectively, they are not proof of a life after death.  Subjectively, they are an indirect indication that physical death is not the end, that there is something beyond that.  But there are also reports from mediumistic people who contact the deceased on behalf of the living.  There are fascinating reports emerging.  In addition, there are a number of studies that have already been undertaken scientifically.  There are numerous reports and studies.

You give lectures on the subject of near-death experiences. Do people tell you about their experiences, or do they not take the risk?

Kuhn: Very few people tell me anything in the official question and answer session. But in the personal conversations after the lecture, they do. I have met people who not only talk about near-death experiences, but also about contacts with the deceased. On the one hand, there are apparitions, visions that, for example, forewarn  someone possibly of a misfortune, as well as simple messages such as "I'm fine (now)." There is also much evidence and wisdom in the Eastern and Western 'teachings' that mainstream thinking in science and religion ignores, or does not accept. All this leads me to say: I believe in a life after death.

That is unusual for a scientist ? 

Kuhn: Yes, until I was about 40, I was still sceptical. I have tried to examine the various sources: Over the years, certainty about a transcendent reality has increased. But that is certainly not synonymous with someone who has actually had a near-death experience.

Every now and then a scientific sceptic is converted.  Like the neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander, a professor at Harvard.   He was in a coma for seven days, and reported on his journey to another dimension in his book, "Proof of heaven"

Yes, Dr. Eben Alexander has changed from "Saul" to "Paul." A very personal, fascinating report.

Alexander writes: My experience has shown me that the death of the body and the brain is not the end of consciousness - that the human experience extends beyond the grave.

At a lecture you once said that near-death experiences are a 'thorn in the side' of the materialistic worldview. Can consciousness or spirit therefore exist separately from matter?

Kuhn : Consciousness has to be independent of matter. Near-death experiences often occur in people whose brains are no longer functioning, nevertheless, these people experience a clear, enhanced  consciousness. This paradox  challenges the theory that these experiences are only hallucinations.

I have always been very bad at physics.  In a space where time and distance are irrelevant, in which there is no matter, particles can interact instantaneously over a long distance. This is what the cardiologist Dr Pim van Lommel, who studies near-death experiences, explained in an interview. In other words,  modern physics might explain something that religions have been teaching us for millennia?

Kuhn: In general, the neurobiological world view is an outdated worldview.  It is a worldview of classical physics. Since then, the theory of relativity has been developed, but above all, quantum theory.  Consciousness cannot be explained or understood materialistically. Perhaps quantum theory can contribute to the solution of this phenomenon more than classical physics, since the interaction of consciousness and matter plays an essential role in this process.

We still do not know how consciousness can be generated by brain cells, as it is postulated.  However, it is dogmatically scientifically assumed that it must be so.  However, near-death experiences show that certain ideas of neurobiology are not correct.  

There are (dogmatic) colleagues of mine who say that near-death experience can be explained neurobiologically. The dying neurons firing off, oxygen deficiency (causing hallucinations). These are their explanations, but they are not proven. There are now numerous pointers that allow for the conclusion that near-death experience cannot be fully explained neurobiologically.

For example, when someone who was born blind describes their surroundings ? Or someone recounts a situation he could not actually have witnessed because he was clinically dead?

Kuhn: The verified cases are not enough for them. Pim van Lommel once said that if we had ten cases, my colleagues would demand a hundred !  If one admits that near-death experiences are not hallucinations, one would have to recognize a parapsychological phenomenon. I have been familiar with the sceptical arguments for 40 years. There are always people who say that it doesn't exist. There will always be people who doubt everything. Also because most argue on a completely different level, for example in Internet discussions.  They have hardly read any of the literature, they only know it superficially and they have a materialistic worldview. Anyone who has worked intensively with this subject,  as a scientist, rather says: There's something else. Or: We cannot explain it yet.

If we assume that consciousness survives the body, would there have to be something like a great, collective consciousness?

If you read how Dr. Eben Alexander describes his near-death experience, you get an idea of how that could be.  He speaks of knowledge that is there immediately, of many worlds.  The awareness of the near-death experience goes far beyond the earthly consciousness. Dr Alexander suspects the brain is a filter.

We only partially experience consciousness, downgraded to our reality. But the real consciousness, which emerges during the near-death experience, is something far more fantastic.  The paradoxical awareness of a near-death experience is unexplainable: how can someone whose brain is shut down, who is not properly perfused, experience such clear, lucid consciousness that goes far beyond the earthly consciousness in itself, even beyond space and time?

The near-death experiences are marked by feelings of happiness, the feeling of not needing to be afraid of death. Are there any accounts of people going into a negative kind of world?  I do not like to talk about hell now. . .

Kuhn: There are actually such cases. The American doctor Barbara Rommer has dealt with this. She has come to the conclusion that these experiences were ultimately also positive for the people.  They were fearful/ scared at first, but then they were motivated to change their lives positively.

To change one's life, to reorient oneself - is that the tendency after a near-death experience?

Kuhn: Such an experience often has a transformative factor that influences people sustainably.  Many become spiritual.

What can we, those who have not had a near-death experience, learn from this? Is there a message for all of us: we don't need to be afraid of death?

Kuhn: Dr Kenneth Ring, the US's best-known near-death researcher, speaks of the gift of transformational changes, people who can learn to better understand reality and their lives. In the last ten years so many reports and books have appeared, many people are daring to talk about their experiences. Even if science still claims at the moment, that they can be explained, the increasing interest of the public in the topic shows that people no longer really trust science. You are wondering if maybe our worldview should be different from what we imagine.  People see that many scientific ideas are only theories and hypotheses.  That there are other explanations.

You can analyse a brain, examine it, look at the individual neurons. ? But you do not know how the mind works, right?

Kuhn:  Exactly. You can see connections, they explain a lot, but there are areas that are not completely explainable.  There are more and more people, including philosophers, who critically deal with neurobiology.  Neurobiologists claim that when the brain is dead, then there is nothing left.  Wrongly, this idea is presented with an absoluteness, as if that were proved. But I think that people are smarter than that and they wonder if that's really true? 

There is no evidence it is the case, it is just a dogmatic belief. That leads me to the topic of science and materialism. Science as a method is good, science can also deal with the hereafter. Science does not exclude the possibility of a hereafter. Only materialism says it cannot exist. In the minds of many, materialism and science are equated, the same.

Maybe it needs a new degree program: Neurophilosophy ?

There are some people at the universities who deal with neurophilosophical issues.  But the taboo of the subject and the scientific dogma is so strong that you only receive a shake of their head when you express such ideas among academic colleagues, or you are simply shunned or ridiculed.

Death is not the end, is a comforting thought. No matter what from it takes. A gathering of consciousness, for example.
 
That's a Buddhist notion. In the Christian concept, God remains above man. Everyone thinks differently.

Near-death experience

Four million people in Germany have at least once, after an accident, serious illness, childbirth or spontaneously had an extraordinary experience that shaped their lives. The most common features of a near-death experience include: floating out and observation of one's own body, seeing brilliant light, often persons known to be dead at the end of a tunnel, extraordinary happiness, life review, meeting with deceased relatives, disappointment with the "return" to the  body, a changed life lived without fear of death (Source: Near death experience Network).

Professor Wilfried Kuhn was born in 1952 in Würzburg. After studying chemistry he entered medicine, followed by  specialist training in neurology and psychiatry, in 1989 specialising in the subject of neurology at the University of Würzburg.

[Edited by an admin to add references and to properly distinguish quoted material]

From the introduction to "In battle and captivity: a British officer's memoirs of the trenches and a German prison camp" by Captain Gilbert Nobbs:

Gilbert Nobbs was in England at the outbreak of the First World War, so he rejoined the London Rifle Brigade in which he was a promoted to Temporary Captain in September 1914 [LG October 1914 p. 8152]. On September 9, 1916, during the Somme Offensive, he led his company in a charge on the enemy lines.  He was shot through the head, and the bullet exited through his right eye, permanently blinding him. He lay in a shell-hole for two days, as the battle raged round him.

He woke up in a German hospital on September 11th. After his wounds were treated he was sent to a POW camp. His next of kin had already been told that he had died and had received a telegram of condolences from Buckingham Palace, and it was a month before they learned the truth. Captain Nobbs was repatriated to England in December 1916. He was sent to St Dunstan’s Home for blinded servicemen, which he was rather dreading, but to his surprise he found the atmosphere to be cheerful.

He told the story in later years of how at one formal dinner there, he had thrown himself on the man seated next to him and began tickling him, crying out “Hullo, who do we have here then?” A voice replied “Derby” – it was Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War.

(Woerlee's assertions that the blind are able to "see" is not demonstrated too well here) 

From "On the right of the British line" by Captain Gilbert Nobbs (the original title for the book quoted from above - note that this book is in the public domain):

I was wounded, I was blind but the moments that followed are clear in my memory. The brain shocked by a blow works quickly and actively in it's excited effort to hold it's own. I was quite conscious and thinking clearly :I knew what had happened and what would happen, I remembered every detail.

My head at that point was inclined to the right for I was shouting to the men. Like a flash I remembered that at about fifty yards to the left there was a German strongpoint still occupied by the Germans. A bullet had entered my left temple ; it must have come from a sniper in that strongpoint. The bullet had passed clean through my head. I thought it had emerged through my right temple. I was mistaken on that point for I found some days later that it had emerged through my right eye.

I remember distinctly clutching my head and sinking to the ground and all the time I was thinking "So this is the end, the finish of it all; shot through the head, mine is a fatal wound." Arnold jumped up catching me in his arms and helped me back into the shell hole.

I hesitate to tell what followed. But as I am trying record the sensations experienced at the time of receiving a head wound, I will describe the next experience simply and leave the reader to form his own conclusions.

I was blind then as I am now but the blackness which was then before me underwent a change. A voice from somewhere behind me said, "This is death, will you come ?" Then gradually the blackness became more intense;
a curtain seemed to be slowly falling; there was space; there was darkness blacker than my blindness; everything was past. There was a peacefulness, a nothingness; but a happiness indescribable.

I seemed for a moment somewhere in the emptiness, looking down at my body lying in the shell hole bleeding from the temple. I was dead ! And that was my body but I was happy ! But the voice I had heard seemed to be
waiting for an answer. I seemed to exert myself by a frantic effort, like one in a dream who is trying to awaken.

I said, "No, not now, I won't die," then the curtain slowly lifted, my body moved and I was moving it. I was alive!
There my readers, I have told you and I have hesitated to before. More than that I will tell you that I was not unconscious; neither did I lose consciousness until several minutes later and then unconsciousness was quite different. I have told you how clear was my brain the moment I was hit and I tell you also that after the sensation I have just related, my brain was equally clear, as I will show you, until I became unconscious

Call it a hallucination, a trick of the brain, or what you will. I make no attempt to influence you. I merely record the incident-but my own belief I will keep to myself. Whatever it was, I no longer feel there is any mystery about death. Nor do I dread it. 

From the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research – Volume XXV page 126 (understood to be in the public domain):

The following case, which occurred during the 1914-18 War, was sent to Sir Oliver Lodge, and was copied by the narrator, Mr Norman F Ellison, from his War Diary.

‘We left Monchiet’ he says ‘ in the early afternoon and after a gruelling march along a paved road, slippery with mud and melted snow, reached Beaumetz at night. The briefest halt and then on to Wailly, immediately behind the line, some eight miles south of Arras. From there we waded through a winding communication trench a mile long but seemingly interminable. Liquid mud to the knees and a bitterly cold sleet benumbing us through. At last we reached the front line and took over from the French – A Territorial Reserve Battalion.

The worst trenches we had ever been in. No repairs had been done to them for months and months. At worst, they had collapsed inwards and did not give head shelter; at best they were a trough of liquid muck. H and I were in the same traverse and straight away on sentry duty. We were both too utterly fed up to even curse. Bodily exhausted, sodden and chilled to the bone by the icy sleet, hungry and without rations or the means of lighting a fire to boil a dixey of water; not a dry square inch to sit upon, let alone a square foot of shelter beneath which to have the solace of a pipe, we agreed that this was the worst night of concentrated physical discomfort we had come across hitherto – and neither of us were strangers to discomfort.

Several hours of this misery passed and then an amazing change came over me. I became conscious, acutely conscious, that I was outside myself; that the real me – the ‘ego, spirit or what you like – was entirely separate and outside my fleshly body. I was looking, in a wholly detached and impersonal way, upon the discomforts of a khaki clad body, which, whilst I realised that it was my own, might easily have belonged to somebody else for all the direct connection I seemed to have with it. I knew that my body must be feeling acutely cold and miserable, but I, my spirit part, felt nothing.
At the time it seemed a very natural happening – as the impossibilities of a dream seem right and natural to a dreamer – and it was only afterwards that I came to the realisation that I had been through one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

In the morning H remarked to me upon my behaviour during the night. For a long time I had been grimly silent and then suddenly changed. My wit and humour under such trying circumstances had amazed him. I had chatted away as unconcernedly as if we had been warm and comfortable before a roaring fire – “as if there was no war on” were his exact words, I remember.

I never mentioned a word to H or to anybody else about my spiritual adventure that night. He would not have understood and would have laughed at it all, but nothing will shake my inward belief and knowledge that on this particular night my soul and body were entirely separate from one another

Physicist Carlos Mendes,  interviews neurologist Dr Edson Amâncio, who evaluates the  NDE cases interviewed by this channel in 2017.

Dr Amâncio deals with the following questions:

1- What can we derive from the first year of existence of this channel? Have the NDE reports provided information that would help us to understand what we are? Is the information from these reports similar to the information obtained in other countries?

2 - What prevents medicine from affirming, today, categorically that consciousness is not necessarily confined to the brain?

3 - Doctor Sam Parnia says that for science today,  "soul" or "consciousness" is the same thing. Is this statement an indication that we are entering a new era in science?

4- Do you think NDEs can be the gateway to deeper research that considers other forms of mystical experiences?

5- What is the next step?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFEf9OIEzgA

Bob Harris is an English music presenter known for being a host of the BBC2 music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test, and as a co-founder of the listings magazine Time Out.

from Bob Harris – Still Whispering after all these years

I was thriving on the volume of broadcasting I was doing, but getting very tired. The weekend schedule was punishing and I wasn't looking after myself, still seeking escape routes of various kinds and staying up late, particularly when entertaining friends. A typically indulgent Thursday night at our Putney flat finished at about 4 o'clock, when I collapsed into bed. I woke up with a start at about 7.45.  It was Miri's Christmas school play that morning and, although I felt absolutely dreadful, I'd promised to be there.

I drove across to West Hampstead through the heavy rush hour traffic hunched over the steering wheel, shifting around uncomfortably in an attempt to ease a dull, aching pain that was beginning to tighten down the sides of my chest. I almost collapsed into the chair beside Sue when I arrived for the performance.
'You look terrible,' she said. 'You should go straight back to bed.'

After catching the opening few minutes I took her advice and struggled back to Putney, where I slept for the rest of the day. By the following afternoon I was feeling much better, and was watching the England Rugby Union International on television when the doctor arrived. I even asked him if I'd be OK to get down to Radio 210 the following afternoon. He said probably not, that I'd got a mild case of flu [sic]  and should take it easy for a couple of days. There seemed no particular cause for alarm.

A few hours later, however, things took a dramatic turn for the worse. The discomfort in my sides returned, only worse this time. It felt like I was in the grip of a tightening vice. I started getting flashes of jagged pain right through the centre of my skull, like a meat cleaver cutting through the bone. It was so horrendous that I started screaming and bashing my head against the wall, trying to cause a diversionary pain.
Then I started convulsing.

Jackie rushed me to the Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton, where the medical staff spent the next 15 hours working to save my life. As they were wheeling me through to the emergency department, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. My skin had turned yellow and my face had broken out in a hundred red-rimmed spots. How could I have got so ill so quickly? They could neither sedate me nor give me anything to kill the pain for fear of masking the elusive virus that was doing so much damage.

An initial diagnosis suggested a brain infection of some kind and I endured three lumbar punctures that dreadful night, needles inserted deep into my spine to withdraw the spinal fluid needed for testing. It wasn't until later that I discovered I'd contracted a form of legionnaire’s disease, linked to pneumonia.

It was almost unbearable, yet equal damage was being done to my pride. I was absolutely frantic about the idea of being seen in this condition, of being recognized. I just couldn’t bear the thought of being pushed into a general ward and having to face people. As they transferred me into a small private side ward of the intensive care unit, I felt peaceful relief. For the first time in many hours, the pain lifted and I was suspended in a tranquil silence.

I became an observer, having an extraordinary out-of-body experience. From some indeterminate height I was looking down at myself hooked up to all that life-saving machinery, while white-coated figures bent over me in urgent activity. I felt emotionally detached from myself, yet connected by what seemed to be a silver thread, as thin as a strand of a spider's web. I was hypnotized by an overwhelming feeling of serenity, a certainty that this feeling was not the end of my life, more a stepping stone into whatever came next. It was a tranquil and beautiful feeling.

I sensed a tunnel of light, as if into another dimension. Then, click. Everything went black. I looked up to see my mother come into my music room at my parents' house in Arlington Road in Northampton. I was probably about 13 years old. It was summer and the sash window had been pushed up a little, letting in a breeze that disturbed the net curtains my mum always used to hang. I looked at the pictures on the wall, feeling excited and happy, knowing this was no dream - I was really there.

I could feel the breeze on my face. Everything was exactly as it was. Then, click. Everything went black again. I remember briefly coming to and being hugged tightly by a woman, presumably a nurse, whose voice I didn't recognize. ‘Thank God, oh thank God,' she said over and over again, before I fell back into my coma. I finally opened my eyes and blearily began to take in my surroundings.

As I came to, I became aware of someone sitting in one of those big old hospital chairs at the side of my bed. It was George. 'Hiya, man,' he said casually.
'Hiya, George,' I replied. 'What time is it?'

'Ten to five ... Thursday afternoon' he told me. 'You've lost four and a half days.'...........

Legionnaires' disease is a form of atypical pneumonia caused by any type of Legionella bacteria. Signs and symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, high fever, muscle pains, and headaches. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may also occur. This often begins two to ten days after being exposed.

From an online newspaper article to be linked to here

[Unfortunately, because we have been unable to obtain permission from the copyright-holder to publish tim's English translation of the German original, we have had to truncate tim's excellent work. The link to the Google auto-translation will have to suffice unless/until we obtain that permission. --Laird]

Johanna K. was 28 years old when she had to undergo a life-threatening operation for severe internal bleeding and was placed in intensive care.  The doctors told her husband that it was doubtful she would survive the night.  That same night something strange happened, Johanna later reported:

Suddenly she felt a lightness she had never previously experienced, she felt she was getting out of her body and floating above her bed.  She saw herself lying in the bed, saw how the doctors and nurses came into the room and took care of her.  Every word that was spoken was clearly understandable to her, like she was viewing a movie. She heard the doctors  discussing her critical condition, discussing the dosage of medication while she wondered why there was all such hustle and bustle that accompanied the scene.

https://translate.google.co.uk/translate...rev=search

Quite an interesting NDE with some evidential components (not all of them mentioned here). I've included everything, some may find parts of it a bit cloying but it would be unscientific to leave them out, I feel.       

[The following is tim's original translation of the original article, „Ich war klinisch tot", copyright Georg Thieme Verlagsgruppe, reproduced here with the kind permission of the publisher, per emailed request. The Google Translate version of the article into English can be found here. I think you will agree that tim does a far better job than Google! --Laird]

23.09.2013
 
"I was clinically dead"

Christine Stein was operated on for an aortic tear.  While the surgeons struggle to save her life, she has a so-called "near-death experience." In the interview, she talks about what she experienced and how the experience changed her life.


Christine Stein

Ms. Stein, you had a serious accident when you were nineteen.  What exactly happened there?
 
I was on my way to my work (in my car) at a kindergarten when a truck hit my driver's side with full force.  It pushed my car off the road and then it toppled over onto it.  Because I was trapped, the fire department had to cut me free, then I was taken immediately via helicopter to the hospital clinic.  During the emergency operation, the doctors diagnosed a number of life-threatening injuries. 

I had a brain compression, a cerebral hemorrhage, and a detached eye nerve. The collarbone, eight ribs and pelvis were broken. My lungs, spleen and aorta were damaged.  Luckily, the doctors were able to patch me up again. But during the night, just hours after surgery, the patch on my main artery that was used to repair my injury, loosened.  I was quickly operated on again and this time the bleeding was stopped.

Your condition after surgery was very critical and you were put into an artificial coma. Was your family aware that your life was in danger?

Yes, the doctors spoke very openly with my family. My relatives even arranged for a pastor to come and anoint me.  The terrible thing was that everyone thought I wouldn't know this.  But that was not true!  I could not move or speak, but I could still hear.  It was terrible not to be able to tell them that I would make it. I never thought anything different.

How long were you in the clinic?
 
I was in a coma for eleven days, in total I was in the clinic for almost three weeks.  When I finally got home, I was only there for five days. Because on April 22, the patch on my aorta failed again.  Fortunately, my best friend Kai was there at the time, a paramedic.  He quickly knew what to do and also alerted the ambulance service to take me to the clinic.
 
In the following surgery, you were clinically dead for 23 minutes. During these minutes, you had a near-death experience.  What did you experience during this?

I suddenly got up from the operating table and saw the room from above, floating as if under the ceiling.  I could look into my open chest and watch the surgeon at work.  After having this bird's eye view, I found myself in heaven.  Scientists like to talk about the hereafter.  But for me that's such a cold term and I prefer to use the word 'sky.' There, I was barefoot and I had a floor-length, light blue dress on.  My grandparents approached me waving and called my name.  It was the first time I had met my maternal grandparents, because both of them died very early.  I immediately recognized them because in the 'sky,' they looked as they did in the last pictures taken of them on earth. 

The two of them embraced me and told me they wanted to show me their realm.  They took me to different places.  In one place I could look down to the earth. I quickly realised that I just had to think about a certain person and I could look down on them.  I then saw my family in the waiting room of the clinic worried about my life.  I still get a lump in my throat when I think about what they had to go through.  I wanted to tell them that I'm fine and that I'm not in pain.

Can you describe the hereafter?

The landscape is similar to the earth.  But the colours were very different, there was no brown and no black, everything was very pastel.  I described it in more detail in my book.
 
Have you also seen the light described in many near-death reports?

No, but I was surrounded by a light all the time.  It was a warm, pastel-colored light that did not dazzle me.

Did you know other people in the afterlife?
 
I didn't know most of them, but some I did.  For example, two former neighbours.  They smiled at me, radiating warmth and love.  To experience a feeling of love to this extent was completely new to me.  I'd only known that from my family until then.  You cannot imagine it, and the eyes of the two told me a lot even without words.  They looked very happy and were ordinary people, not ghosts or beings of light.  When my grandparents gave me a kiss on the cheek, I felt it as I would on earth.

How did the journey end?
 
At some point, my grandparents said that my visit was over, as I had one more mission to fulfill on Earth, which I had  already begun, but which was far from finished. Then they said that we will see each other again in many years time.  And then, zap, I was gone.  But I don't know exactly how that happened.  I was suddenly hovering  over the operating table and I heard the surgeons say, "Yes, we've got this baby back again.  She's doing it. These were his words and that confirmed that I was really back.  My next memory I have is back in the recovery room.

Did you immediately remember the near-death experience in the recovery room?

Yes, I had the experience immediately in mind.  At no time did I think that all this was just dreaming or the side effects of anaesthesia.  The whole thing was too realistic for that.  I knew that it was not a dream, but reality.  I stayed in the hospital for a while and talked to the surgeons at some point and told them what I had experienced. At first I thought  they would say "Yes, Ms. Stein, these are the side effects of anaesthesia". But both surgeons said, "Ms. Stein, we believe you, that may well be the case, we've heard that before."

Many people consider such experiences to be hocus-pocus.  What do you say to the critics ?

I provide evidence to people who have doubts: When I said goodbye to my grandparents, I cried - on the one hand, I was overjoyed to be allowed to return to earth and, on the other hand, sad to have to leave my grandparents. The surgeons were able to tell me later that tears ran down my cheeks during the operation. (crying under anaesthesia is practically unheard of apparently) Everyone has to decide for themselves what they believe in and I don't want to proselytise to anyone with my experience.
 
Why did you want to tell the public about your near-death experience?

Some time after the accident, I began to write down my experiences, the near-death experience, and my life afterwards. I just realized that it helps me to process what happened.  I never really wanted to publish the story.  I figured if everyone who had an accident wrote a book about it, the bookstores would be overflowing.  But then it also occurred to me that my experience could be helpful to other people.  Now I have founded a publishing house myself and I distribute my book "Like an Angel - Once in heaven and back".

Do you receive much feedback about your book?

This again confirms that the accident was (an inevitable ?) part of my life. Recently, an anesthesiologist told me that she and her colleagues had successfully resuscitated a girl. Her colleagues actually wanted to give up the resuscitation attempt, but she urged them to keep going.  She remembered a TV interview I'd given and made her colleagues understand that one must never give up hope and sometimes miracles really happen.

Do you still often think about the accident?

Yes, the accident was 13 years ago, but the memory is always there.  This begins when I have a shower in the morning and I see all my scars. Or if I hear a helicopter or other specific noises that I associate with the accident.  Sometimes a few tears will roll and I get goose bumps.  But I have discovered my life again and can now say that I'm back in the midst of it.  I am fine and I have no more disabilities except maybe I get tired faster and I'm not as resilient as I used to be.  That's because I'm missing a piece of my right lung.  When I overwork, my body signals to me and then I know I have to change down a gear.

Had you heard of near-death experiences before your experience?

Yes, I had heard and read about them before.  But I could not believe such stories because I wasn't impressed with the evidence and I couldn't envisage it.

Are you religious?

Before the accident, I would have said that I believe in God, but I wasn't really that interested. In my thirteenth year, I had to go to church with my parents every Sunday.  But honestly, I just sat there bored and spent most of my time looking at the clock.  If you ask me now, I can clearly say that I believe in God.  I am a believer and I believe all the prayers my loved ones have said have been answered.  And I believe that God has something for me to do here on earth.
 
Have you ever wondered why this accident happened to you?
 
No, because I think it was planned by God. The accident is just part of my life.  I've accepted that and never blamed God.

How has your life changed after the accident?

I live and experience everything much more intensely today.  For example, I am happy when I feel the rain. I feel protected by the deceased in heaven because I know they always keep an eye on me and they are part of my life. Everyday is a gift because I never know when God will take me back to heaven, finally then for good.  I would like to share with everyone one more sentence: Make each day your friend and love that day, because you never know if it may already be your last in this world.

The interview was conducted by Ines Elsenhans