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A good friend of ours died a few years ago. Some twenty minutes
after dying, he was revived. He recalls the experience vividly. He found himself
travelling up a tunnel of light where he met with, and talked to, several deceased
relatives. After some time, he was told that it was not his time to die
just yet, as he still had work do in his life. He discussed with his relatives
what that was, then agreed to return. The next thing he recalls is being revived. When we spoke
to him a few weeks after the event, he said that he had had to work very hard
to keep the memory alive. That it seemed to want to fade away very quickly (much
like a vivid dream) could be interpreted several ways. This is such a common experience that it must have some grounding
in reality. Many scientists have said that there a number of possibilities.
Firstly, this type of tunnel of light experience could be a hallucination experienced
as the brain starts to shut down. Some have even speculated that this may be
the brain's way of making dying pleasant. Others claim that the hallucination may the result of the
brain being starved of oxygen for a while, then the supply being restored. Since
we can't know, they say, what a person who is not revived goes through, there
is no evidence that this is a universal experience when dying. Many believe that it is an accurate experience of leaving
the body, and that on permanent death, we progress further along the tunnel
to wherever we go next. In 1972, Stanford Research Institute started a research program
into what is known as Remote Viewing. The research was requested by the CIA
as part of a project which eventually (in 1991) became known as "Star Gate."
This was an attempt to use "psychic" abilities for espionage. The program consisted of a small number of people considered
to be talented in this area. In essence, they were asked to "travel"
to a previously selected location (unknown to them), often after being given
some kind of code to identify it, and describe or draw what they found there. Tests continued over many years and have been, not surprisingly,
extremely controversial. Some scientists believe that the program has validated
some psychic abilities, others vehemently deny that. In any event, although some of the people experienced visiting
the location and examining it as though they were there, from our point of view
we are faced with the same dilemma as earlier. Were they leaving their bodies
and travelling to the place? Were they using telepathy to read the mind of a
person who knew the location? Were they using some other type of psychic skill,
which simply appeared to them as a visit to another location (in the same way
that a scent can vividly transport us back in time)?
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