Near Death Experiences

When my Grandfather was lying on his death bed he said that he could see an angel sitting at the end of his bed. Not only that but he saw his mother waiting for him to pass through to the other side. Depending on your beliefs this could claimed as a religious experience or something that could be explained through science.
When we dream our brain releases a chemical that causes to dream, it’s the same chemical released just before death which cause us to have these hallucinations know as Near Death Experiences or NDE. The chemical is called Dimethyltryptamine or DMT and is released from the pineal gland of our brain. DMT is also used as a powerful hallucinogenic drug found in many plants that can be extracted. This is what causes people to claim that they are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, old loved ones, and even themselves from a different body also known as outer body experiences.
“When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases —as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness.”

There is an on going study to what really happens to our brain when we die. Many of these outer body experiences claim to have had full conciseness after being pronounced dead and can recall everything that had happened during those few encountered moments of death. Jeffrey Long, MD & Paul Bernstein, PhD have conducted a 13 year study interviewing people with near death experiences. "Of the 344 patients tracked by the Dutch team, 18% had some memory from their period of unconsciousness, and 12% (1 out of every 8) had what the physicians called a "core" or "deep" NDE." There are explanations for these experiences and further study will help explain what actually goes on with our brain during this time.


Bryan Sims