After being involved in a car accident a man, who only gives his name as Gary, temporarily died. Before he was resuscitated by paramedics, Gary believes he crossed over to the afterlife where he gained proof that Jesus is real. Writing for the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, Gary described his vivid experience of life after death.
He said: “I was in blackness but with hundreds of sparkly lights. I was a little scared because I could see my hunched-up body and knew that I’d passed over.
“To my left and in a field, there were many people. I saw my grandma and her sister who had passed in the previous year. The colours were so vivid! In front of me was a medium-sized stream with a white bridge over it.
“Jesus was standing on the other side of the bridge. There was a huge, sunlight object shining down on his left side. But it didn’t hurt me to look at it.
“Meanwhile, a man stopped and ran over to my body. He cradled my head in his lap, telling me to wake up.
“I heard in my head, Jesus asking me, ‘Gary, would you like to stay for eternal peace and happiness or go back?’ I thought, ‘I’d like to go back’.”
Suddenly, Gary was back in his body, but he said the experience has changed him forever.
He wrote: “If an experience like this doesn’t change you, then there’s something wrong with you.”
Some researchers, however, said these visions are normal phenomenon and not necessarily a sign of an afterlife.
Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, told a recent Oz Talk: “People describe a sensation of a bright, warm, welcoming light that draws people towards it.
“They describe a sensation of experiencing their deceased relatives, almost as if they have come to welcome them. They often say that they didn’t want to come back in many cases, it is so comfortable and it is like a magnet that draws them that they don’t want to come back.
“A lot of people describe a sensation of separating from themselves and watching doctors and nurses working on them.”
Dr Parnia said there are scientific explanations for the reaction, and says seeing people is not evidence of the afterlife, but more likely the brain just scanning itself as a survival technique.
