A woman named Rebekah believes she saw the afterlife following a near death experience. Following an aggressive seizure, Rebekah collapsed, leaving her fighting for her life. While she was under, Rebekah believes she saw what was on the ‘other side’.
Rebekah claims that she was soaring through the clouds, overlooking Earth beneath her.
Rebekah detailed her experience on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, where she said: “I was soaring through what seemed to be clouds.
“I felt I was with or on an eagle who had been euthanised weeks ago at the veterinary clinic. I worked at.
“I knew he was bringing me somewhere safe, although I never saw him. I felt that I was with him. The clouds opened up and I saw the most beautiful valley of green.
“I felt such Happiness. I felt all those who I loved who were there. Again, I cannot see these people. I just knew and felt a sense of calm and comfort such as I have never experienced before.
“Then, I saw darkness and a light. I saw things I had done in my life, and I also saw some things I was doing that I always have wanted to do but had not yet experienced.
“Then, it felt as if I were spinning. Then my daughter came into view and I thought about the repercussions if I went to the light.”
Rebekah then woke up but is now convinced she has seen the afterlife.
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However, researchers are not so convinced Rebekah’s experience is necessarily proof of the afterlife, but rather a natural reaction in the brain as an individual approaches death.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch, president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, believes near death experience visions are typically signs the brain is running out of oxygen or scanning itself for survival techniques.
Dr Koch wrote in an article for Scientific American: “I accept the reality of these intensely felt experiences. They are as authentic as any other subjective feeling or perception.
“As a scientist, however, I operate under the hypothesis that all our thoughts, memories, precepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain rather than of any supernatural ones.
“That premise has served science and its handmaiden, technology, extremely well over the past few centuries. Unless there is extraordinary, compelling, objective evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to abandon this assumption.
“Modern death requires irreversible loss of brain function. When the brain is starved of blood flow (ischemia) and oxygen (anoxia), the patient faints in a fraction of a minute and his or her electroencephalogram, or EEG, becomes isoelectric—in other words, flat.
“This implies that large-scale, spatially distributed electrical activity within the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, has broken down.”
