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My father was hit by a drunk driver when I was 10 years old and it left him in a coma for a full month, and unable to walk for a year. He experienced the tunnel of light, believes he communicated with relatives that had passed away, and was able to repeat almost to the word the conversation the doctors had with my mother the day of the accident - outside of his hospital room. After a lifetime of owning businesses and real-estate and working non-stop, he lost interest in anything other than pursuing an understanding of spirituality and philosophy from that point forward. He eventually went back to school and is now a holistic doctor that focuses on Eastern medicines.
Cool story - except that he drove our family into bankruptcy, lost our house, and then he left to go live with another family "that understood him better" within a month of his walking again. He and I didn't speak for years and re-establishing a relationship between us was a long road. His "awakening" never felt all that spiritual to me, it more looked like a man who faced his own mortality and was scared as hell.
Do I believe in the near-death experiences? Yeah, there is something to it that we don't really understand. Because of my father, I have met many people who have "crossed over" and come back - he belongs to a group that gives talks to terminally ill patients about the experience. Maybe we don't talk to ghosts, and the white tunnel may just be fluorescent hospital lighting, but people who go through it change on very base levels in the same way. It's hard to explain, but they have a calmness in the way they approach things that I find reassuring.
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Oft expectation fails...
and most oft there Where most it promises
- Shakespeare, W.
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