By Jenny Hope | DailyMail.Co.Uk
For centuries, those brought back from death's door have claimed they had a glimpse of the afterlife.
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They speak of seeing a tunnel, a light, dead relatives, or their own lives flashing before their eyes.
Some even recall floating out of their bodies and watching doctors struggling to revive them.
Medical and scientific experts have maintained these ‘near-death experiences' do not exist and are simply a normal reaction to intolerable stress.
Yet now university researchers claim to have produced compelling scientific evidence that they really do happen.
Others say this may show the mind continues to exist after death.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) occur when someone is clinically dead, their heart has stopped beating and their brain no longer functioning.
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The study, one of the most extensive scientific investigations into the phenomenon, shows that almost one in five heart attack patients who were brought back to life had had an NDE.
The researchers say known medical explanations cannot account for these out-of-body sensations.
Dr. Pim van Lommel and colleagues from the Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, Holland, investigated the experiences of 344 heart patients resuscitated after cardiac arrest.
All had been clinically dead at some point during their treatment, says a report in The Lancet today.
Sixty-two patients reported NDE, of whom 41 described a deep experience during a special state of consciousness. These included out-of-body experiences, pleasant feelings, and seeing a tunnel, a light, deceased relatives, or a life review.
The researchers said: ‘Our results show that medical factors cannot account for the occurrence of NDE; although all patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE.
‘If purely physiological factors caused NDE, most of our patients should have had this experience.'
Dr. Sam Parnia, a clinical research fellow at Southampton University who made similar findings earlier this year, called the latest report ‘very exciting'.
‘This is a very significant study because it takes us one step closer to understanding the human condition at the end of life which has been ignored by the scientific community until recently,' he added.
Astral travel takes you beyond human sensual/perceptual experience while you are still fully living…………
I have had a NDE 6 years they are real and God does exist.
Yes they are mistaken.
I have been reading “about” others NDE experiences and then the “scientists” interpretations” of their explanations for their NDE. I have experienced two NDEs. The first in 2000 was during a 17 day coma and the second during a severe illness in 2012. Now to my main point that is so exasperating — NDEs have little to do with the brain and thinking. They are all about the mind. There is little to no connection between the brain and the mind. The brains purpose is all about the body and has a birth and a death which is very measureable and easy for the scientific people to measure and play within there little tightly focused paradigms. That is really a shame. Has science ever located the mind? They don’t even have clue where to look and if they did they would never find it because it is non-local. Each of us has a brain BUT their is only one MIND which we all share. During a NDE experience the brain may as well not even exist and in many cases barely does. My quick point is a totally mindful journey that is so beautiful that we can not even come close to describing the wonderful and beautiful experience of God and total Peace and Light.
Experiences of the mind have their own knowingness which is devoid of language for there is no language. The only people of this earth that can actually converse about the NDE experience are others who have had one. I really am fed up with so called science which has no clue and trying to fit someone elses experience into their miniscule paradigm. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LETS STOP CONFUSING THE FUNCTIONING OF THE BRAIN WITH THE MIND.