The man, who died for 7 minutes, recounted his experiences of the “other side” on Reddit
Man who died for 7 minutes shares insights from ‘the other side’
Story by Paige Freshwater & John O’sullivan
An academic who “died” for seven minutes has shared what he saw on ‘the other side’. Speaking about the incident, the man, who’s been deep into astrophysics PhD studies for 40 years plus, revealed a near-death experience due to a lung hemorrhage in March that resulted in a code blue – medical emergency call.
Through Reddit, he shared his story: “It took the doctors seven minutes to get my heart started again. During that time, I had a stroke due to the lack of oxygen in my brain.” Upon gaining back consciousness after two days of a semi-conscious state, he posed the question: “What happened?”
‘The actual correlation was something of a challenge to comprehend but he got the hang of it eventually, reports the Mirror. His experience during those collapse moments extinguished his dread of death. He quipped: “I’m not scared of dying, not in the least. Afraid of what comes before, sure, but nature makes dying easy.”
Further detailing his vision, he noted: “I saw a series of three oval ellipses, one at a time, just suspended in a black space. The ellipses were all upright, as though they were suspended by a string (but they weren’t), and they all had a thickness to them, like a ring. On the inner and outer surfaces of the first ellipse, I saw mountains, streams, forests, and clouds.
“They were beautiful at first, but then they began to sour as their colors took on a yellow tinge. It faded away, and was replaced by a second ellipse that was a hot ring of iron, so hot that pieces of iron were slowly crumbling from it.” He remembered the smell of iron, which he later realized could be the scent of blood, suggesting that his physical surroundings influence his visions. He continued: “I now take it that this is when I was in cardiac arrest.
Suddenly the scene brightened to reveal the third ellipse that was covered with beautiful clouds that were light pink and blue, like from the most beautiful sunrise or sunset.
That, I believe, is when my heart started beating again.
When I regained consciousness, those three ellipses remained firmly fixed in my memory. When I was told days later about my cardiac arrest and stroke, it all began to make sense to me.”
In an attempt to understand his visions, he explained how he had been studying German astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Astronomia nova – Wikipedia and trying to comprehend how Kepler determined that the orbits of the planets are ellipses rather than circles. He believes that during his cardiac arrest, this concept was still on his mind, causing him to “latch onto that shape” subconsciously.
“That’s all I saw. No tunnel of light or happy deceased family members welcoming me.
I think that dreaming, and dying reflect what happens to be most accessible in your mind during that time. Your mind tells you a story about it. I was never afraid during my ordeal, I was just a dispassionate observer. Amazingly, the only lasting effect of my seven minutes of code blue is a slightly diminished capacity of my short-term memory.” Your senses will shut down in a specific order when you’re about to die (msn.com)
Dr. Anthony D. Cicoria: The Story of One Man’s Profound Near Death Experience (1/2) (youtube.com)
Indeed, Dr. Tony Cicoria’s experience was remarkable. Struck by lightning in 1994, he found himself outside his own body, witnessing a woman performing CPR on him. Then, surrounded by a bluish-white light, he felt an enormous sense of well-being and peace. However, he abruptly returned to life. His near-death encounter aligns with what experts like Dr. Sam Parnia has studied: death is a process, not a black-and-white moment1. Fascinating, isn’t it? 
Learn more 1allthatsinteresting.com 2newsweek.com 3en.wikipedia.org
All of the world’s civilizations throughout human history have contemplated what happens when we die, both scientifically and spiritually — and the answers have always varied quite a bit. According to Dr. Sam Parnia, who has studied near-death experiences for years, Cicoria’s encounter was not an uncommon one. – Search (bing.com)
“Death is a process,” Parnia added. “it is not a black and white moment.”
In recent years, doctors like Parnia and close-call survivors like Cicoria have helped deepen humanity’s understanding of what happens when we die.
What Science Says About What Happens When You Die
While we may not fully understand the feeling of dying until we experience it for ourselves, we do know what happens to our bodies right before and after death.
At first, according to Dr. Nina O’Connor, a person’s breathing will become irregular and unusually shallow or deep. Their breath can then begin to sound like a rattle or a gurgle, which happens because the person isn’t able to cough up or swallow secretions in their chest and throat.
“All of it comes from the process of the body slowing and shutting down,” she says. This sound has been fittingly called “the death rattle.”
Then, at the moment of death, every muscle in the body relaxes. This may cause the person to moan or sigh as any excess air is released from their lungs and into their throat and vocal cords.
PEOPLE ARE AWESOME 2012 HD AWOL nation Sail (youtube.com)
Meanwhile, as the body relaxes, the pupils dilate, the jaw may fall open, and the skin sags. If the person has any urine or feces in their body, these will then be released too. But as Parnia suggested, death doesn’t happen in an instant and some researchers assert that our brains can operate up to ten minutes after our hearts stop beating.
Within the first hour after death, the body begins to experience the “death chill” or algor mortis. This is when the corpse cools from its normal temperature to the temperature of the room around it. After a couple of hours, blood will begin to pool in the areas of the body that are closest to the ground due to gravity. This is known as livor mortis.
If the body stays in the same position for several hours, these body parts will start to look bruised while the rest of the body grows pale.
Limbs and joints will then begin to stiffen within a few hours after death during a process called rigor mortis. When the body is at its maximum stiffness, the knees and elbows will be flexed and the fingers and toes may appear crooked.
But after around 12 hours, the process of rigor mortis will start to reverse.
This is due to the decay of internal tissue and it lasts between one and three days.
During this reversal, the skin begins to tighten and shrink, which can create the illusion that the person’s hair, nails, and teeth have grown. This skin tightening is also responsible for the illusion that blood has been sucked from the corpses, which in turn inspired some of the vampire legends of medieval Europe that we still know today.
What Happens to Your Body When You Die – Search Videos (bing.com)
According to some physicians, death can feel like either a great depression or the need to poop.
Aside from the science of death and decomposition, humans have always also sought to know what the sensation of dying feels like. Because most of us, unlike Cicoria, won’t ever have a near-death experience, we are simply left wondering: What does it feel like to die?
And according to general practitioner Dr. Clare Gerada, death can sometimes feel like having to use the bathroom.
“Most people will die in bed, but of the group that don’t, the majority will die sitting in the lavatory. This is because there are some terminal events, such as an enormous heart attack or clot on the lung, where the bodily sensation is as if you want to defecate.”
If a person doesn’t die from a terminal event, however, and instead passes on more slowly from a long-term illness or old age, dying may feel a bit like depression. Toward the end of their lives, people tend to eat and drink less, which results in fatigue and a lack of energy. This causes them to move, talk, and think slower.
Dr. O’Connor adds that “the physical fatigue and weakness [of people near the end] is profound. Simple things, like getting up out of bed and into a chair could be exhausting — that could be all of someone’s energy for a day.” But because it’s so often difficult or impossible for dying people to express how they’re feeling during the event, the question of how it feels when we die remains largely shrouded in mystery.
What Happens To Your Body When You Die – Search Videos (bing.com)
While the more ineffable matters of what it feels like to die may always be fuzzy, what’s very clear is what happens to the body in a practical sense after death. But how we handle our dead bodies and what ceremonies and rites we perform still varies greatly around the world.
Typically in the West, bodies are embalmed after death. The process of embalming dates back to the ancient Egyptians — and even earlier — when some cultures mummified their dead in the hopes that their soul could one day return to the corpse. Aztecs and Mayans likewise had a history of mummifying their dead, as did many of the world’s most studied civilizations in the pre-modern era.
But as for modern, Western practices, embalming in the U.S. only became popular during the Civil War as a means of transporting fallen soldiers back to their families to be buried. Modern embalming is a meticulous process. As soon as a doctor has certified that a person is dead, the body is transported to a coroner who may request a postmortem examination.
This process requires a pathologist to complete an external and internal examination. For the internal examination, the pathologist removes every organ of the body, from the tongue to the brain, and then inspects them and places them back in the body. Next, the body is drained of all its fluids, which are replaced with a preservative like formaldehyde. Meanwhile, the throat and nose are packed with cotton wool.
The mouth is stitched or glued closed from the inside. The hair is washed, the nails are cleaned and cut, and cosmetics are applied to the face and skin. Plastic caps are applied under the eyelids to help them hold their shape. Finally, the body is dressed and placed in a coffin. From here, it can be buried or cremated, depending on the person’s preference, culture, or religion.
What Really Happens After You Die — From People Who’ve Been There
Setting aside what happens to the deceased’s body after they die, what happens to them, to their very being and their soul? While the world’s cultures and religions can offer some possible answers, so can survivors of near-death experiences.
“I had the vision of seeing a white light and looking down and seeing myself in this bedroom with a nurse frantically trying to save my life and jabbing injections in me, and I’m calmly watching this whole thing,” she said, describing a scene common in reports from those who have almost died.
Dr. Sam Parnia recorded this phenomenon with multiple survivors during his 2014 study of near-death experiences. One patient could recall what was happening in the hospital for a full three minutes after his heart had stopped.
“The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two beeps from a machine that makes a noise at three-minute intervals,” said Parnia. “So we could time how long the experience lasted for. He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”
While not every survivor that Parnia spoke with had an out-of-body experience, as many as 40 percent of them do recall having some sort of “awareness” when they were declared clinically dead. Even after flatlining, many survivors recall seeing a bright, welcoming light, or their deceased relatives, or the doctors and nurses working on them in the hospital.
What’s more, many of the people who experienced consciousness after death remember not wanting to return to their bodies. However, many scientists remain skeptical of these reports and attribute them to everything from lucid dreaming to a lack of oxygen in the brain.
While more research needs to be done before we know for sure what happens when we die, perhaps it is at least comforting to think that our consciousness floats on as our bodies expire.
Source What Happens When You Die? What Scientists Think Happens In The Afterlife (allthatsinteresting.com)
Scientists Find Surprising Differences in the Blood of People Who Live Past 90 (msn.com)
Death Doesn’t Exist And May Just Be An Illusion, According To Quantum Physics (msn.com)
Death Doesn’t Exist, It’s Just an Illusion According to Quantum Physics (msn.com)
Weird Things People See When They Have A Near-Death Experience (msn.com)