The man, who has been an astrophysics PhD academic for more than 40 years, said he was not scared of dying but was afraid of what comes before
A man who experienced death for seven minutes has revealed what he witnessed on ‘the other side’.
The man, an astrophysics PhD academic for over 40 years, was hospitalised in March last year due to shortness of breath. After it was discovered that he had a lung haemorrhage, he developed a cardiac arrest and a ‘code blue’ – a term used to alert medical staff of an adult’s medical emergency – was declared.
Sharing his experience on Reddit, he detailed: “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.
“I woke up intubated and only semi-conscious for two days, then fully regained consciousness and asked, ‘What happened?’ It is hard to correlate inner time to what was happening outside, but I can make some sense of it.”
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However, what he saw during those seven minutes has alleviated his fears about death. He said: “I’m not scared of dying, not in the least. Afraid of what comes before, sure, but nature makes dying easy.”
He added: “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 colours 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 being able to smell the iron, though later realised blood can produce this scent, suggesting he was linking the physical room’s odours with his hallucinations.
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.”
Attempting to understand his extraordinary experience, he explained how he’d been researching German astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Astronomica Nova, trying to grasp how Kepler discovered planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular.
With this concept still occupying his thoughts during his cardiac arrest, he suspects he “latched onto that shape” subconsciously. “That’s all I saw. No tunnel of light or happy deceased family members welcoming me. I think that’s 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.”