At the Universiteit Utrecht, where Pim van Lommel received his medical degree.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the strange little corner of the internet where they seem to spend much of every day, a few of my more, umm, continuous critics profess to be baffled by what they claim to see as my obsession with near-death experiences.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no need for bafflement. \u00a0I\u2019m by nature pretty transparent and, indeed, sometimes almost too candid, and I\u2019m certainly open about my interest in near-death experiences. \u00a0I\u2019ve been interested in them since at least the publication of Raymond Moody\u2019s Life after Life<\/em> in 1975 \u2014 and I\u2019ve compiled a rather large (but still not quite completed) book manuscript on the subject. \u00a0I\u2019m still gathering up notes about NDEs, though, and I find that sharing some of my notes here provides an incentive for me to extract them from materials that I\u2019ve read (or still intend to read) but haven\u2019t yet incorporated into the manuscript.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is an account that appears in Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience<\/em>\u00a0(New York: HarperCollins, 2010). \u00a0It was written by a nurse who was involved in the case:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the night shift the ambulance crew brings in a forty-four-year-old cyanotic [purplish-blue skin discoloration], comatose man. \u00a0About an hour earlier he had been found in a public park by passers-by, who had initiated heart massage. \u00a0After admission to the coronary care unit, he receives artificial respiration with a balloon and a mask as well as heart massage and defibrillation. \u00a0When I want to change the respiration method, when I want to intubate the patient, the patient turns out to have dentures in his mouth. \u00a0Before intubating him, I remove the upper set of dentures and put it on the crash cart. \u00a0Meanwhile we continue extensive resuscitation. \u00a0After approximately ninety minutes, the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he\u2019s still ventilated and intubated, and he remains comatose. \u00a0In this state he is transferred to the intensive care unit for further respiration. \u00a0After more than a week in coma the patient returns to the coronary care unit, and I see him when I distribute the medication. \u00a0As soon as he sees me he says, \u201cOh, yes, but you, you know where my dentures are.\u201d \u00a0I\u2019m flabbergasted. \u00a0Then he tells me, \u201cYes, you were there when they brought me into the hospital, and you took the dentures out of my mouth and put them on that cart; it had all these bottles on it, and there was a sliding drawer underneath, and you put my teeth there.\u201d \u00a0I was all the more amazed because I remembered this happening when the man was in a deep coma and undergoing resuscitation. \u00a0After further questioning, it turned out that the patient had seen himself lying in bed and that he had watched from above how nursing staff and doctors had been busy resuscitating him. \u00a0He was also able to give an accurate and detailed description of the small room where he had been resuscitated and of the appearance of those present. \u00a0While watching this scene, he had been terrified that we were going to stop resuscitating and that he would die. \u00a0And it\u2019s true that we had been extremely negative about the patient\u2019s prognosis due to his very poor condition when admitted. \u00a0The patient tells me that he had been making desperate but unsuccessful attempts at letting us know that he was still alive and that we should continue resuscitating. \u00a0He\u2019s deeply impressed by his experience and says he\u2019s no longer afraid of death.<\/strong> \u00a0(20-21)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In the strange little corner of the internet where they seem to spend much of every day, a few of my more, umm, continuous critics profess to be baffled by what they claim to see as my obsession with near-death experiences. \u00a0 There\u2019s no need for bafflement. \u00a0I\u2019m by nature pretty transparent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>