Placeholder Content Image

Man who died for seven minutes reveals his encounter with the afterlife

<p>A British actor has shared what happened during his brief, yet profound experience in the afterlife, after he was pronounced dead for seven minutes. </p> <p>Shiv Grewal, 60, was having lunch with his wife when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest. </p> <p>His wife frantically called an ambulance, but Shiv's heart had already stopped beating. </p> <p>“I knew, somehow, that I was dead,” Grewal said, according to <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/i-died-for-7-minutes-before-being-brought-back-to-life-heres-what-i-saw/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_content=curalate_like2buy_7Rd1H9jc__bf5c46e3-ff70-4690-9b19-4f40d83c952f&utm_term=curalate_like2buy&crl8_id=bf5c46e3-ff70-4690-9b19-4f40d83c952f" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link-type="article-inline"><em>The New York Post</em>.</a></p> <p>“I felt things completely separate from my body. It was like I was in a void but I could feel emotions and sensations.”</p> <p>Shiv went on to say the experience felt similar to "swimming through water" with a sense of weightlessness and disconnection from the physical world.</p> <p>“At one point, I was travelling over the moon, and I could see meteorites and all of space,” he said.</p> <p>Grewal remembers feeling like he definitely didn't want to die and would do whatever it took to return to his physical body, despite the endless possibilities of the afterlife. </p> <p>“There was a whole set of possibilities, various lives and reincarnations that were being offered to me,” he said.</p> <p>“I didn’t want them. I made it very clear that I wanted to return to my body, to my time, to my wife and to go on living.”</p> <p>Grewal was rushed to hospital were he underwent a surgery to have a stent put into his main artery, which had clogged. </p> <p>He was then put in an induced coma for a month. </p> <p>While the traumatic experience happened almost ten years ago, Shiv explained that he hasn't fully recovered from the emotional impact. </p> <p>He said his life has been completely transformed, and is still trying to work through the profound emotions of that day. </p> <p>“I remembered everything that happened when my heart stopped and have tried to translate it into art,” he said.</p> <p>Before the accident, Grewal was more cynical about the idea of an afterlife, but now has completely changed his mind. </p> <p>“I’m less fearful of death because of it, but at the same time, I’m also more fearful, because I’ve realised how precious everything I have in life is,” he said.</p> <p>“I’m grateful just to be here.”</p> <p><em>Image credits: Instagram</em></p>

Caring

Placeholder Content Image

Readers respond: What do you think happens after death?

<p>Death is a part of life, but what happens after we die is always up for discussion.</p> <p>We asked our readers what they think happens after death, and the responses were overwhelming. </p> <p>Here's what they said. </p> <p><strong>Sandra Kennedy</strong> - I believe there's a hereafter not for our body but for our soul where we are all equal &amp; loved by everyone a place where hate is not known.</p> <p><strong>Sharon Rekiud</strong> - I don’t care. Worrying about the afterlife takes away enjoyment from living now!</p> <p><strong>Karen Rudrum</strong> - I think you stop breathing and that is the end, then you are buried or cremated and you return to the earth from which you came.</p> <p>It comforts me to think this unending cycle of birth and death continues and there is nothing else. It makes the time we are alive special and meaningful.</p> <p><strong>Roy Mansfield</strong> - We fall asleep and dream, when the brain ceases to function the dreams end and we are just a body. There is no afterlife, but if you believe there is, then that is your prerogative.</p> <p><strong>Viola Agnew</strong> - Hopefully our inner spirit leaves our body and returns to our heavenly home until the resurrection and then by a miracle our spirit and body will reunite at some point. At least I'm hoping for that...</p> <p><strong>Ros Bieg</strong> - You are gone, dust to dust. You live on in the hearts and minds of those who knew and loved you.</p> <p><strong>Vesna Gregory</strong> - Your spirit leaves your body leaving just a shell. Your body is left behind on earth to fertilise it for future generations. The spirit is free, with no pain and limitless intergalactic travelling or staying around earth in a spiritual ship called heaven or hell for those that abused other people’s bodies. </p> <p>Spirits talks to a live human body through their dreams. The loved ones comfort and talk to the spirits that still occupy the human body. That’s what I like to think for my peace of mind.</p> <p><strong>Lorraine Ferris</strong> - I can’t wait for resurrection morning when we will be reunited with our loved ones who have passed on. Death is just a sleep until that time. A marvellous hope when you have lost your other half.</p> <p><strong>Beverley Laing</strong> - I know first hand what happens after death. I was so blessed to have passed over to the other side, had an incredible interaction with some of my loved ones and other beings, then sent back. I was gone for 7 minutes but it seemed much longer than that on the other side. </p> <p>Definitely not afraid of death as it is a far, far better place we go than we have ever been. We definitely ‘go home', and it’s so beautiful.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Caring

Placeholder Content Image

Brain surgeon claims he saw the afterlife while in a coma

<p>An academic neurosurgeon has recalled the "life-changing" near-death experience he claims he had while deep in a coma as his brain was ravaged by a rare bacterial infection.</p> <p>Dr. Eben Alexander told The Sun that before his near-death experience (NDE), his many years as a doctor made him skeptical at the idea of an afterlife, rather believing that our consciousness dies at the same time as our bodies.</p> <p>However, after his "life-changing" and "profound" NDE, the 68-year-old has experienced a "180-degree flip" in his belief system, claiming to have seen heaven with his own eyes, calling it more real and alive than the realm we currently inhabit.</p> <p>“I basically used to have a very conventional, scientific and reductive materialist view that consciousness was created by the brain, and that only the physical world exists,” Dr Alexander said.</p> <p>“And what my coma journey showed me … is that consciousness is something that is fundamental in the universe and does not originate in the brain."</p> <p>“What I experienced was the most extraordinary, memorable, detailed, and ultra-real experience of my entire life,” Alexander continued.</p> <p>“In fact, the world we live in, this material world, is more kind of cloudy and dreamlike than what I saw on the other side."</p> <p>“That world is sharp, crisp and alive – and very real.”</p> <p>On the morning of November 10, 2008, Dr Alexander woke up with severe pains in his back and what he described as "the worst headache of his life".</p> <p>After being transported to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he worked as a neurosurgeon, he discovered he had contracted an incredibly rare and aggressive form of E. coli meningoencephalitis, which had started to gnaw away at his brain.</p> <p>He was hastily placed in an induced coma and onto a ventilator, with his chances of survival diminishing by the hour.</p> <p>According to Dr Alexander, his medical records show that his brain was "very badly damaged", with his brainstem also in "deep trouble".</p> <p>As his chance of survival dipped to just 10 percent, loved ones gathered by his bedside, and although it seemed his grip on life was loosening, he insists his spirit had travelled to another realm in which he was experiencing a “re-birth”.</p> <p>“People think going through this experience, in this state of almost amnesia, must’ve been very horrific,” he told The Sun, “and yet, I knew nothing else as a possibility, and therefore, to me, it all just seemed natural."</p> <p>“This was existence. There was nothing foreboding about it."</p> <p>Dr Alexander claims he was in a dream-like forest with plush clouds, tall trees, sweeping valleys and groups of joyous people dancing.</p> <p>He says he spoke telepathically with a woman who told him, “You are loved. You are cherished. There is nothing you can do wrong.”</p> <p>His peace in this heavenly realm was soon interrupted as he was thrown into an infinite depth and darkness before waking up.</p> <p>As he regained his consciousness, he started to think he had truly glimpsed the afterlife.</p> <p>“Those memories of that kind of [infinite depth] psychotic nightmare disappeared within a week or two, compared to memories of the deep coma experience, which was sharp, crisp, vivid, alive and detailed today, as if the whole thing just happened."</p> <p>“As more than half of people who’ve had an NDE will tell you, it’s a much more real existence than this existence in the material world.”</p> <p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

Mind

Placeholder Content Image

3 people who came back to life reveal what they saw on “the other side”

<p>It’s the question we’ve all asked: What happens after death? These people say they have an idea.</p> <p><strong>Can people really see things when they’re “dead”?</strong></p> <p>No matter what you believe about the afterlife (or lack thereof), there’s no denying that plenty of people have claimed to see visions or have out-of-body experiences after their hearts have stopped.</p> <p>Sceptics might brush those off, but researchers have found that most near-death experiences tend to have common themes: Feelings of leaving or returning to their bodies, a sense of peace, bright lights, and encounters with spirits or people.</p> <p>In fact, medical treatment is good enough now that there’s a difference between clinical death (no breath or pulse, but could still be resuscitated) and biologic death (actually dead).</p> <p>Even cynics might get chills hearing about these otherworldly visions from people who were clinically dead or close to it.</p> <p><strong>1. “The most glorious feeling”</strong></p> <p>In 1994, orthopaedic surgeon Tony Cicoria called his mum from a pay phone during a lake house trip. They’d hung up but he still had the phone in his hand when a blue flash came out. He hadn’t realised there’d been a lightning storm brewing. He felt his body fly backward – and then, confusingly, forward. Cicoria turned around to see his own body lying on the ground. “I’m dead,” he thought. No grief. No ecstasy. Just a fact.</p> <p>After watching a woman start CPR, Cicoria moved on, floating up the stairs to see his kids getting their faces painted, realising that they’d be OK. “Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light … an enormous feeling of wellbeing and peace,” he told the New Yorker. “The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up… There was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, ‘This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had’ – slam! I was back.” (Weird side note: The doctor who revived Cicoria became overwhelmed with the urge to play and write piano music.)</p> <p><strong>2. “Just love. Unconditional love.”</strong></p> <p>After a four-year battle with lymphatic cancer, Anita Moorjani slipped into a coma in 2006. Doctors were sure it was the end – not realising that in her near-death state, she still had a consciousness. Initially, she felt like she was floating above her body with “360-degree peripheral vision” of the hospital room and beyond, she told <em>TODAY.</em></p> <p>She couldn’t see her late father himself, but she did feel his presence, and he had a message for her. “He said that I’ve gone as far as I can, and if I go any further, I won’t be able to turn back,” she said. “But I felt I didn’t want to turn back because it was so beautiful. It was just incredible because, for the first time, all the pain had gone. All the discomfort had gone. All the fear was gone. I just felt so incredible. And I felt as though I was enveloped in this feeling of just love. Unconditional love.”</p> <p>About 30 hours after falling into a coma, Moorjani flickered back into consciousness. Two days later, her organs started to regain function and the tumours started shrinking. Now she’s cancer-free and is a public speaker and author of books like <em>What If This Is Heaven?.</em></p> <p><strong>3. “It was really bright”</strong></p> <p>Annabel Beam had been diagnosed with two chronic, life-threatening digestive disorders at age four. By age eight, she was ready to give up until something unexplainable happened. She was sitting on a tree branch 10 metres in the air when it cracked; she fell all the way down and into a hollow at the base of the tree, where she was trapped for six hours. She says she died and went to heaven: “It was really bright, and I sat on Jesus’s lap and he told me, ‘Whenever the firefighters get you out, there will be nothing wrong with you,’” Beam told <em>TODAY</em>. “And I asked him if I could stay and he said, ‘No, I have plans you need to fulfil on Earth that you cannot fulfil in heaven.’”</p> <p>When she woke up, her illness had healed. Her mum wrote the book <em>Miracles from Heaven</em>, which was later turned into a film.</p> <p><em>Written by Marissa Laliberte. Republished with permission of </em><a href="https://www.wyza.com.au/articles/lifestyle/11-people-who-came-back-to-life-reveal-what-they-saw-on-%E2%80%9Cthe-other-side%E2%80%9D/page/1"><em>Wyza.com.au.</em></a></p>

Art