OUT OF MY BODY AT DEATH

A SEPARATION BETWEEN OUR BODY AND SOUL HAPPENS AT DEATH

"Man is not spirit, but has it: he is soul...., In the soul which sprang from the spirit, it exists continually through it, lies the individuality--in the case of man, his personality, his self, his ego." (Old Testament theology, PP 217) see Job 33:4 "God's spirit made me...."

DEATH IS ONE OF THE MOST COMMON AND MOST CERTAIN EVENT  IN HUMAN LIFE BUT YET  ONE OF THE MOST UNNATURAL HAPPENING

"It shouldn't shock the Christian when people undergoing clinical death and being revived come back with certain recollections. I tried to keep an open mind and I hope that this interesting phenomenon will get the benefit of further research, analysis, and evaluation. Too many of these experiences have been reported for us to simply dismiss them as imagery or hoaxes"--Dr. R.C. Sproul, Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary

Dr. Michael Sabom, the author of numerous books on death and author of "LIGHT & DEATH" had one problem with theology in his research, HE comments:

The near absence of hellish stories provoke some Christians to accuse near-death experiment experimenters as well as researchers--me included--of taking part in a collusion to deny the existence of hell. Some of the more do notable researchers fired back, criticizing Christians for excepting only the In D E asked that seem to advance a fundamentalist dogma. And Christians retaliated with charges that researchers

users were doing exactly the same thing, but to advance Eastern and New Age philosophies.

One reason that I'm including the stories, and some of them verifiable,  there have been thousands of reports, from doctors with medical training and methodology.  This article by Dr. Sabom was well monitored by at 20 attending doctors and nurses.                                
                                          I'm not trying to prove any theology, except the fact that man has a soul that separates from the body at death. That the soul not only as separate from the body but actually is the cognitive person that had lived within a particular physical body. Death used to be determined by lack of breathing or heartbeat, now a more reliable way is a flat brain wave.

NEAR DEATH

Three clinical tests commonly determine brain death.

 First, a standard electroencephalogram, or EEG, measures brain-wave activity. A "flat" EEG denotes the nonfunction of the cerebral cortex - the outer shell of the cerebrum.                                                                                                                                                   Second, auditory evoked potentials, similar to those [clicks] elicited by the ear speakers in Pam's surgery, measure brain-stem viability. Absence of these potentials indicates nonfunction of the brain stem.                                                                                       Third, documentation of no blood flow to the brain is a marker for a generalized absence of brain function.

During "standstill", Pam Reynold's brain was found "dead" by all three  above clinical tests - her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the "deepest" near-death experience of all Atlanta Study participants.

Thirty-five-year-old Pam Reynolds was being operated on for a giant basilar artery aneurysm. A weakness in the wall of the large artery at the base of her brain had caused it to balloon out much like a bubble on the side of a defective automobile tire. Rupture of the aneurysm would be immediately fatal.

The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neurosurgical techniques. She had been referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as "hypothermic cardiac arrest", which would allow Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success.

By 8:40 a.m., Pam's entire body except for her head and groin had been blanketed with sterile drapes. Over 20 doctors, nurses, and technicians as scrubbing in.

Surrounding Pam's head was an neurosurgical team, including the main surgeon, who sat in a specialized chair controlled by foot pedals, leaving both hands free to operate. To the right of her legs through the cardiac surgical team. At her feet set the heart pump technicians with her giant chrome-headed pump oxygenator and cardiopulmonary bypass equipment. And to her left were the neuroanesthesiologist,  who were monitoring her vital signs and brain function. Perfect coordination among these four medical teams would be critical if the aneurysm were to be successfully removed and Pam retrieved from her journey to the edge of death.

This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, would require that her body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms she would be dead. But in the hands of skilled physicians she was not. Or was she?

As the operation was being performed, Pam's near-death experience began to unfold. She relates the story with remarkable detail and her observations of the surgery were later verified to be accurate:

A loud buzzing noise and filled the OR as the poor a full thumb-sized motor hidden in the brass head of the bone saw revved up.

"The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a natural "D." As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ...I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder. It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people.

(Later she described accurately the surgical teams and their placement in the operating room.)

"I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ...

"The saw-thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up. I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that.

"Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize.

"There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz - being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel.

"At some point very early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me. But I didn't hear her call me with my ears ... It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. I trust that sense more than I trust my own ears.

"The feeling was that she wanted me to come to her, so I continued with no fear down the shaft. It's a dark shaft that I went through, and at the very end there was this very little tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

"The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a lightbulb. It was so bright that I put my hands in front of my face fully expecting to see them and I could not. But I knew they were there. Not from a sense of touch. Again, it's terribly hard to explain, but I knew they were there ...

"I noticed that as I began to discern different figures in the light - and they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them - they began to form shapes I could recognize and understand. I could see that one of them was my grandmother. I don't know if it was reality or a projection, but I would know my grandmother, the sound of her, anytime, anywhere.

"Everyone I saw, looking back on it, fit perfectly into my understanding of what that person looked like at their best during their lives.

"I recognized a lot of people. My uncle Gene was there. So was my great-great-Aunt Maggie, who was really a cousin. On Papa's side of the family, my grandfather was there ... They were specifically taking care of me, looking after me.

"They would not permit me to go further ... It was communicated to me - that's the best way I know how to say it, because they didn't speak like I'm speaking - that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to me physically. They would be unable to put this me back into the body me, like I had gone too far and they couldn't reconnect. So they wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything.

"I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared. It was like watching a movie on fast-forward on your VCR: You get the general idea, but the individual freeze-frames are not slow enough to get detail.

"Then they [deceased relatives] were feeding me. They were not doing this through my mouth, like with food, but they were nourishing me with something. The only way I know how to put it is something sparkly. Sparkles is the image that I get. I definitely recall the sensation of being nurtured and being fed and being made strong. I know it sounds funny, because obviously it wasn't a physical thing, but inside the experience I felt physically strong, ready for whatever.

"My grandmother didn't take me back through the tunnel, or even send me back or ask me to go. She just looked up at me. I expected to go with her, but it was communicated to me that she just didn't think she would do that. My uncle said he would do it. He's the one who took me back through the end of the tunnel. Everything was fine. I did want to go.

"But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ...It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it.

"It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool. No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ...It was like diving into a pool of ice water ...It hurt!

"When I came back, they were playing "Hotel California" and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more. [laughter] When I regained consciousness, I was still on the respirator."

AS FIRST MENTIONED:

For practical purposes outside the world of academic debate, three clinical tests commonly determine brain death. First, a standard electroencephalogram, or EEG, measures brain-wave activity. A "flat" EEG denotes nonfunction of the cerebral cortex - the outer shell of the cerebrum. Second, auditory evoked potentials, similar to those [clicks] elicited by the ear speakers in Pam's surgery, measure brain-stem viability. Absence of these potentials indicates nonfunction of the brain stem. And third, documentation of no blood flow to the brain is a marker for a generalized absence of brain function.

But during "standstill", Pam's brain was found "dead" by all three clinical tests - her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the "deepest" near-death experience of all Atlanta Study participants.

From the book LIGHT AND DEATH by Dr. Michael Sabom

Dr. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, NDE researcher and confessing Christian, is the author of the book Light and Death. In its pages, he recounts this NDE of a patient whose heart had stopped beating and whose brainwaves were flattened:

As we first mentioned my point is that Pam's "Being" existed outside of her physical body. She now existed, intensively alert, having memory--her. soul having mind, will, and emtion_--all the functions of her soul, but not her physical body. Her body, which now lay on the operating  table, looked like a train wreck, she had to reenter.