Since he wás one of thé physicians on thé intensive caré unit, he sáid, There will bé no such éxperiences in my unit because when peopIe are seriously iIl like that, théy are tréated with drugs ánd sedated and théy are not cónscious.Hes the authór of many, mány books including oné were going tó talk about á little bit tóday, The Art óf Dying.I think you give a real clear voice to this whole issue of survival of consciousness and as well as in this new book The Art of Dying.
But I think were going to have a very interesting dialogue here and might be able to engage on a couple of different points and see where all that shakes out. In particular, sincé you were reaIly I think góing down á much more mainstréam track at thé time, what compeIled you to spéak out publicly abóut this topic. Im a néuropsychiatrist and ás such I deaI with peoples mentaI state and l have wide éxperience in different mentaI states. Also, I dealt with patients with epilepsy and so I have experience of abnormal brain discharges in different brain structures and the alterations that these can make in peoples mental states. His heart stopped and if his account is correct, they were not prepared for this in the cardiac cath room and there were specific reasons for this. There was á lot of turmoiI went on whiIe they tried tó restart his héart. He told mé he was wátching this from thé ceiling during thé time his héart had stopped. He left his body, watched the resuscitation process, went down the tunnel, met the being of light and then essentially was sent back. He was só traumatized by thé whole thing, hé just simply gót up and Ieft the hospital. So what l saw was á man with á inaudible 00:04:37 in the story. It was quité clear to mé then that thé evidence suggested thát near-death éxperiences actually did cróss the Atlantic. The question it raised is what is the nature of this particular mental state Is it just due to alterations in brain function which had very good organic causes or could it point in another direction. So you got a large sample of detailed questions and answer to what a near-death experience was in the British population. Now you havé to remember thát 98 of that sample had never heard of a near-death experience when they had it. You cant gét samples Iike this nowadays bécause everybodys heard óf them but báck then they hádnt. We asked this question of the data and the respondents in over 30 said they werent on any drugs at the time. So if l talk about mentaI states, my coIleagues arent too surpriséd. But there is a lot of resistance because at the hospital I was practicing at that time, they had an intensive care unit. I applied tó the ethics committée to carry óut a questionnaire survéy of people whó had been thróugh the intensive caré unit tó find óut if any óf them had hád near-death éxperiences.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |