Near-death experiences, sensational revelations: there is a tunnel, those who return no longer fear dying

 

Near death experiences, better known in scientific terms as Near Death Experience, are experiencing growing interest. Neglected in the last century and archived as pseudo-paranormal phenomena or afferent to psychiatric pathologies, the Nde according to recent studies present a precise epidemiology, they have been measured and they are not as labile and sporadic events as you could imagine. The incidence is around 10% and in some particular cases, up to 18%, for example in patients with cardiac arrest. Professor Enrico Facco, professor of Anesthesiology and Resuscitation at the University of Padua and specialist in Neurology and pain therapy, says it. Facco, author of "Near Death Experiences - Science and Consciousness on the border between physics and metaphysics", Altravista editions, analyzes about twenty cases of patients who have lived experiences of leaving the body and life beyond life. A common element in the case history of near-death experiences is the well-known passage in the tunnel which leads to a supernatural dimension. In this essay of almost four hundred pages Facco tells the experiences of 20 patients detected with the Greyson scale, developed precisely to measure the degree of vividness of the Nde, the Paduan teacher then goes into a historical and philosophical excursus on the concept of returning from the border with life.

“The NDEs are very strong mystical experiences - explains Professor Facco - in which the patient has the sensation of entering a tunnel and seeing a light in the bottom of it. Most of them say they have met deceased relatives or unknown people, probably deceased. In addition, contacts with higher entities are described. For almost all the subjects analyzed, there is a holographic review of one's entire life, as if a balance were to be made. All experience a joy and serenity of extraordinary depth and intensity, only in a small minority have we witnessed experiences with some unpleasant tones. Basically we are not faced with forms of delirium or transient organic alteration of the brain without any meaning ". The cases of Nde are universal experiences that occur in all latitudes of the world. There is a very large literature on the subject, from the earliest times: from Heraclitus to Plato, up to the Indian Vedas. What is constantly encountered is the paradigm shift that occurs in the lives of people returning from travel to the end of life. “The NDEs have an enormous transformative value and lead the patient to overcome the fear of death. Many begin to see life from another perspective and to develop new and different metacognitive perspectives. For most of the patients examined, there is a physiological phase of crisis and transformation in which the subject, starting from his previous vision of life, develops a new strategy of understanding life and the world in a cognitively more evolved and more beautiful sense ".

Some of the patients, there is talk of a very small percentage, even return with clairvoyance or telepathy powers that before did not have. Traditional science looks to near death cases with less suspicion than before. The international scientific community takes its cue from the NDE to study the mechanisms that govern brain functions and alternative states of consciousness that are currently unknown. For example, the tunnel phenomenon has been explained as the natural narrowing of the retina which could justify such a vision. Professor Facco has entered into the merits of this scientific hypothesis. “The idea of ​​tunnel shrinkage, for example, is found in pilots subjected to very strong gravitational acceleration. They present a narrowing of the visual field produced by circulatory alterations related to sudden acceleration. It actually only happens in that case. In all other patients, tunnel narrowing in the event of cardiac arrest or fainting does not appear to be reported in the literature. Incidentally, in cardiac arrest, the function of the cerebral cortex is stopped earlier than the retina stops. There is, therefore, no time to realize this type of experience. The narrowing of the visual field cannot, in any case, explain the subsequent vision of the light at the end of the conduit and the entry into a metaphysical landscape ". At the moment science has classified four rigorously confirmed cases of Near Death Experience. The first two are reported by Michael Sabom, a well-known American cardiologist and Allan Hamilton, a neurosurgeon at Harvard, the others are multicenter studies of absolute scientific rigor

"In these four cases - highlighted Professor Facco - the patients after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest, or having ceased having brain functions during a very deep general anesthesia, testified to the precise vision of the details of what had happened around to their body at this stage. This clashes against our neurological and neurophysiological convictions and we don't have an explanation for this yet ". The problem is to understand if there is something that we still do not know about the laws of nature and the physiology of consciousness compared to what we have known so far. "It is not a matter of affirming or proving the existence of the soul - points out the Paduan teacher - but of studying and developing unknown aspects, with a strictly scientific method, to deny or confirm what the phenomenology of consciousness is in these apparently paradoxical situations" . But where is the research on near-death experiences? “The international community - stresses Facco - is working hard. By now science is ubiquitous in the world. There is a large group of scholars and scientists who work in a multidisciplinary framework: anesthesia, resuscitation, psychology, neurology and psychiatry who specifically deal with these near-death experiences and, in general, with what I have defined as non-ordinary manifestations of consciousness . The latest study was published last month by Sam Parnia, an American doctor, who completed a multicenter study of 2 cases. In it he made a very in-depth analysis of near death experiences, going beyond the concept of Nde as an experience with already known requirements, but trying to understand how consciousness works in critical conditions at the borders of life also through other possible manifestations ".