Nearly half of people who ‘died’ had a near-death experience

Around 40 percent of people have reported having lucid experiences and heightened awareness while they were ‘dead’.

Although their hearts had stopped functioning for up to an hour, patients who were revived with CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) said they had been aware that they were experiencing death and EEG machines linked to their brains were detecting patterns associated with thoughts and memory.

Their experiences included separation from the body, observing events around them without pain or distress, and having ‘a meaningful evaluation’ of their actions and relationships.  Memories from childhood to the present were also recalled, seemingly in sequential order.

The experiences weren’t hallucinations, delusions or dreams, say researchers from New York University’s Langone Health, who have been analysing the ‘death state’ in heart attack victims who were revived with CPR.

They tracked 567 men and women who suffered supposedly fatal heart attacks while in hospital.  Four in 10 patients who survived recalled being conscious and having out of-body experiences.

Natural ‘braking’ systems in the brain—which give us our sense of reality—are unshackled when we are dying, and the state of dying opens new dimensions of reality, said Sam Parnia, one of the researchers.  “These experiences provide a glimpse into a real, yet little understood dimension of human consciousness that becomes uncovered with death,” he added.

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