almostaugust

Was wondering if any of you have been close to dying. Did your life flash before your eyes? Spiritual awakenings? Nothing at all?. Id love to hear what youve got to say.

My dad drowned in Sydney harbour in 1950. He was revived after being under water for a long time. He says he doesnt remember anything.
Myself, well, ive been knocked out a few times, and lost consciousness once due to blood loss. All i remember is a strangley comforting dream that i was in this enormous hospital and the nurses said that i will be fine. Then i came around.

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'And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

almostaugust

C'mon. Surely somebody has a cousins brothers uncle who had something happen to him.

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'And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

maleficent

Hmmmm... .. I don't remember what year it was... I was on a cross country from NY to Phoenix... and we weren't that far from landing when the pilot came on and said there was a problem with the landing gear... and we were going to be landing on an emergency runway. Looking out the window you could see about 2 dozen fire trucks, comforting I suppose, but when you think you are about to chase the plane you are on, it's not. At that point I'm kicking myself for sitting in the back of the plane (this w as so long ago - it was t he smoking section)

We assumed the crash position and made avery rocky landing... in the few minutes we're bouncing down the runway, I wasn't too sure if it was the last time I would be landing in a plane... Life flashing before my eyes? nope, didnt happen... I remember being very calm, and completely at peace thought I could hear people screaming and crying all around me.. .I'm sure it was chaos but it seemed like I was a million miles away from there...

We left the plane via the emergency chutes, which was kinda cool and went on our merry way... I don't remember what the problem was... but the pilot seemed to have done a heroic job of landing that bad baby... Getting on a plane 3 days later to go home was a struggle... to this day, I always hear the landing gear on the plane, and I always hear it lock.

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soma

My younger brother was in a car crash (it was actually a van, but whatever). The damn thing flipped over and did all sorts of crazy spins and the sort of things vans do when the careen out of control with a U-haul attached to the back. He said he when it happened, it was like slow motion the entire time. He also forgot a lot of what happened (perhaps a natural subconscious coping mechanism. Afterwards, he was surprisingly unshooken by what had happened. I on the other hand was falling apart having to see the wreckage and not knowing if my brother was ok or not). Some other folks in the van later told him that he was swearing at the top of his lungs, saying things like :"I must be in a F'ing dream!", but he had no memory of doing any swearing. As I said earlier, he was totally cool after it happened. Weird, huh?

So there's a second hand story about near death experiences. Happy?

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StanT

I've been in a couple of pretty bad accidents. When I was 17, a lady pulled in front of me on my motorcycle, saw an oncoming car, and stopped in my lane. My choices were into, over, or under. I slid the motorcycle under her car. I lost a lot of skin, couldn't wear a shirt for a couple months, and knocked myself unconcious; but I there were no serious injury.

In 1996, my wife pulled in front of a 1968 Cadillac that was doing 65+. The Cadillac hit the passenger side wheel well and I was the passenger. It definately happened in slow motion and I was suprised to be alive. I was also suprised to have both legs. Our 1995 Saturn was totaled, apparently it gave it's life for us. My family of four had a couple of concussions and some stiches, but we all walked away. We ordered a replacement Saturn two weeks later.

Seeker

When I was an early teenager my brothers friend allowed me to 'have a spin' in his car while they were fixing some fences down in the back paddocks. Never having actually driven before, I thought I'd give it a go.. I found out that corners, speed and a dirt road actually don't go together really well. I rounded the corner a little too fast, fishtailed a few times and then lost it. The car spun complete circles and stopped abruptly against what I now know was an embankment. What followed went something like this..

After opening my eyes all I could see was white... I thought to myself there was no way I could be dead, the car didn't even roll. But I could not see a thing. I thought well if this is it, so far so good.. I was even a little excited. I opened the door to the car and put my foot out to where the ground should have been. Yep, it was there but this still told me nothing. The dust eventually gave way to my surroundings, to couple with the sad fact that I was still here, I had to go and tell my brothers friend what happened. It cost me a new tyre and wheel rim for his car.. but it was, for a few minutes, a surreal experience.

A funny moment that I will never forget, but nowhere near a 'near death' experience upon reflection...

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To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

Mbwuto

I've got a couple. They all involve other people nearly killing, or seriously wounding me.

First. When I was in my late teens and early twenties I worked as an electrician. I had spent all of one summer wiring and setting up a bank, literally from the concrete up. It was sort of my baby. Anyway, it was our final day on the job, and my final day before I was leaving for college, and someone noticed we had forgot to run a section of wire for one office. It was the leg that would go back to the breaker box. The only problem was that the city had checked out our wiring that day and conencted the building to the power lines. Well, not a big deal. One of us would have to feed the fishtape(conductive mind you) down the conduit into the breaker box and someone else would have to catch it and keep it from touching the buzzbars or lugs that held in the might power of high voltage lines. I got to be the guy who fed the tape.

So, I went and started feeding the fishtape. A man named Bobby, who was a real bright fellow, was one the other side holding cardboard next to the opening where my fish tape would come out to guide it away from any danger. I would ten feet in the air on a ladder waiting to hear him tap the pipe and let me know it was far enough. So I push and push, eventually I realize I should have been there at that point. So I walk back around to the breaker room and...No Bobby. The cardboard is still there but my fish tape has gone behind it. I walk outside and see Bobby talking to one of the building owners. Bobby is not a foreman, or even more than an electrician's hand. Bobby has fucked up.

"Bobby."
"Yeah?"
"Why weren't you watching the conduit?"
"You kept feeding!?"
"Yes..."
"I yelled that I was leaving!"
"...I didn't hear you..."

He pushes past me and stomps off towards the breaker room. I follow and watch him pull off the cardboard. The metal, conductive, fishtape is literally one centimeter away from 480 volts of Mbwuto frying juiciness. Bobby says, I shit you not.

"The good lord was riding with you today!"

I looked at him. My watch. Him. Then I realized oh hey, I almost died. I'm going home. And that was that.

Bobby was later fired.

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- people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent.

George Orwell

MiSo

my friend told me a story about what happened to him one day.
it was in jr. high school, we were 6th graders. i was not there but i knew everyone that was concerned.

my friend Lionel was put into a headlock with from another friend named Jr.
they were just messing around in class one day, it's not like they were enemies. Lionel lost conciousness (sp?) and limped to the ground. the people were in sort of a panic, trying to see if he was still breathing. Jr decides to get a bottle of water and was about to pour it onto Lionels face, but before Jr could, Lionel regained consciousness (sp?).

now the stoy from Lionel's perspective. After blackening out, Lionel had a out of body experience. he saw his own body on the floor and the people panicking. he saw Jr. run for a bottle of water and realized what was going to happen, so Lionel decided to "jump" back into his own body before he got wet.

is it true?... well, you decide

spectre

I've been near death more times than I care to remember, and I've had only one experience close to a "near death experience." It was the whole white tunnel of light kind of experience. The only problem was, I wasn't anywhere near dying at that time. I had hypotension (low blood pressure) and I just passed out. That's it.

From what I understand, research into near death experiences shows that when someone is dying, it's kind of like what I experienced, the resulting lack of oxygen to the brain can cause hallucinations and, like passing out, you'll get tunnel vision which can seem like a tunnel of light especially if your looking up at a ceiling which, especially at a hospital, has bright lights right where you're looking.

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"Fuck these chains
No goddamn slave
I will be different" ~ Machine Head

flstf

A repost from several months ago (can't remember the forum title).

When I was 3 my brother and I were fighting over a pencil. He let go and the pencil wound up embedded in my left eye. My mother and father picked me up and carried me to the kitchen and laid me on an ironing board. I remember floating above them and watching them working on me. My mother was frantic as my father pulled the pencil out and my eye came with it. I felt no pain, but felt sorry for my mother because she was so upset and crying. I remember moving back and forth on the ceiling avoiding the globe lighting fixture as I watched them. I don't remember much else until later.

They told me they rushed me to the hospital and I was operated on for several hours as the doctor put my eye back together. For some reason after the operation they had both my eyes blindfolded and my hands were tied down so I could not mess with the bandages. They kept me blind this way for about a week and my mother stayed in the same room with me.

I remember leaving my body several times during that week and floating up and down the halls of the hospital. By the time they took the bandages off I knew what every nurse and doctor looked like already. I also already knew what the layout of my room and hospital floor was.

I guess because of the operation and all I didn't think being out of my body was a big deal and did not seem strange at all. It seemed normal to me at the time. I remember how much fun it was to float around and how clunky it felt to be back in my body. I have had other experiences later with OBE.

Demeter

I think I can explain the 'light tunnel' thing in my case, anyways.
I was four months pregnant, and had been told the fetus has died.
Fast forward three weeks when my body finally decides to expel the baby. (they told me it was better to let nature take its course than intervene medically- I was too devastated & in shock to defend myself I guess)
I was hemorrhaging badly and I had lost a lot of blood. Gushing is the term here. I had been rushed to emergency & given fluids intervenously until they could get me into surgery. They gave me drugs to contract the uterus & help stop the blood flow.

A nurse was helping me up (I can't remember why) and I saw everything going black in my vision, from the outside in, in slow-motion. I tried to fight it & couldn't. The next thing I know I come to and she has a wet washcloth on the back of my neck, and I'm sitting with my head between my knees. She notices me coming to, and tells me I fainted.
"I fainted...oh, I'm so sorry..." I say....and proceed to black out again.
I realize now the 'tunnel' that had formed in my vision was probably from my blood being diverted from my capillaries (including retinal ones) to the major organs, as ones body will do when traumatized.
It was a very horrible feeling...I struggled to retain my consciousness but couldn't. I realised then I might die & all I wanted was 2 things....
1 - Not to die
2 - my husband & kids, who were two hundred miles away at that moment.

It taught me life is very very fragile...and to tell your loved ones that you love them while you can.

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I am not bound to please thee with my answers.
William Shakespeare

chickentribs

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.