Consequences of Dying

From: The Crossover Experience: Life After Death - DJ Kadagian, Gregory Shushan PhD, Dr. Pim van Lomell
 

54% Report Major Life Changes
75% Report Major Career Changes

 I have come to have a different, and I would say healthier and more informed, understanding of death, the process of dying, and the possibility of an afterlife. 

I have discovered the focus of why I am here — at its core — which is simply to love and to learn. We are all one. That is the insight and message repeated over, and over, and over.

It is the near-death experiencer’s absolute certainty that what they experienced was “more real than real” that has left a lasting impression on me.

It is the case, however, that none of the theories attempting to debunk NDEs, to explain them away in materialist terms, are at all convincing. In fact, the main problems with such theories are very much related to the subject of my research: none of them really addresses NDEs in all their similarities and all their differences across cultures.

Most reductionist theories of NDEs rely on some physiological cause resulting in a compromised brain-state. It has variously been argued that NDEs are caused by anoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain), hypoxia (too much oxygen in the brain), hypercarbia (too much carbon dioxide in the brain), temporal lobe epilepsy, anesthetics, REM intrusion, and so on. If this were the case, if NDEs were caused by physiological processes that invariably result in the same experiences, we would not expect to see such variation between accounts. Since the earliest days of near-death studies, researchers have been trying to pinpoint a set of core elements shared by all NDErs – and after almost 50 years, they have been unable to do so.

Given the diversity of human experience on Earth – with all our cultural and individual uniqueness – why should we expect to suddenly all have exactly the same experience at death?

There is no reason to believe that our diversity would disappear simply because we are no longer housed in physical bodies.

The mere cross-cultural existence of NDEs could also support the idea that they’re genuine. This is especially the case when we consider that people in virtually all societies give them the same basic meaning: this is what happens when we die.

Despite all the diversity of accounts and the obvious cultural idiosyncrasies, NDEs everywhere draw upon the same general repertoire of sub-experiences.

There are children who met deceased relatives they never knew they had, encounters with a person not known to have died whose recent death was later validated, congenitally blind people seeing for the first time during the experience, temporarily brain-dead patients accurately describing surgical procedures they witnessed while out of their bodies,

Recorded Accounts

I am more compassionate and understanding, and things that used to be important don't mean anything anymore. I am more emotional, and have a deeper sense of feelings for others; I care more for the plights of others.

I now make in two weeks what it would take me a day and a half to earn before. I'm able to make my life experiences, knowledge, and skills work for other people. I'm good at what I do, and that's what God wanted me to come back and do. I'm doing it. And it's hard work, but it's very rewarding.⁠

In the days after the event, normal physical life felt convoluted and imaginary, almost surreal. Normal life seemed much more like a perpetual dream-state than the time spent outside of my body. It was as if I had slipped back into a dream when I returned to my body and I still recall the event so vividly that even today events in my daily life feel discombobulated, random, and without purpose.

I started to feel like I had been given a gift of great value, spiritually. My husband thought I was crazy, so I divorced him. Now, I'm happy with who I am, all by myself. I can no longer feel individual love. Like man and wife kind of love. I feel the same love for everybody. I treat them all the same. I do not date or have any intimate relationships.⁠ 

I have had marital issues because I have changed and find importance in other things than my spouse. It isn't bad; it is just different. It is no one's fault we are not connecting on a spiritual level, which has now become of great importance to me. He has given me space to be me, which is helping tremendously.⁠

This experience changed my life. I woke up in awe, and it changed my outlook on life. When I woke up, I wanted to go right back there! No, I did not become suicidal, but I felt I could not wait to go back to that place. I have always been terrified of death. Now I am excited about it.⁠