My NDE

It happened in 1994. What was supposed to be a mundane trip to the garage to get a something – I don’t remember what – turned into the most bizarre experience of my life. I had a near-death-experience (NDE).

Before I get to my experience, I am writing this blog entry in reference to an article I read a few days ago on “death science,” an emerging branch of science investigating the possibility of life beyond death. Now, I am not going to say whether there is life after death or not, I don’t know and it’s going to be an extremely difficult thing to test (much less prove) but I agree in part with Socrates, who regards death in any manner a win since we either go into an eternal sleep or enter a blissful spiritual realm (as related in Plato’s Apology). I have also experienced some of the qualities typically associated with NDE’s through meditation; infinite happiness and infinite sorrow. But, I did not experience either during my NDE. In reading about the experiences of other NDE’ers, it seems my experience was atypical. Here’s what happened.

I was going out the back door of my mother’s house to the garage. The back door was a screen door and although it was the summer, she still had the winter glass installed. Annoyed about going out to the garage for something I thought I had already brought in the house, I pushed the door open too forcefully which broke the spring at the top of the door. The door came back towards me rapidly and in an effort to protect myself, I stuck out my right arm. The glass struck the tip of my elbow and shattered, cutting my forearm in three places, the largest gash being three inches long. I saw blood fly everywhere and knew immediately I was in trouble, so I grabbed my right arm with my left hand to apply pressure. Instinctively, I ran towards the neighbor’s house for help since my mother was not home and I knew I couldn’t dial a phone. The neighbor, Jimmy, wasn’t home, so I had to run downstairs to his tenant’s apartment, get passed the guard dog there, and ask the tenant to call an ambulance.

I slumped against the wall outside their door to wait for help. Meanwhile, the dog was barking in my face which at this point meant little to me. Then, nothing. It was like someone flicked a switch and turned me off; I’d blacked out from blood loss.

The next thing I was aware of was something like a ball approaching me, but I understood this mass of whatever-it-was to be my life experiences. It struck me like a tidal wave and over the next split-second, I re-lived everything that had ever happened in my entire life up to the point I blacked out, after which I blacked out again. At some point I’d woken up and the dog was biting and scratching at me, but I don’t remember who pulled him off. Eventually, the EMT’s arrived and put me on a gurney and whisked me off to the hospital. There, my surgeon said there was so much blood, he initially thought I was a gunshot victim and then sewed me up with 120 stitches. Because I was still in danger from blood loss and because the doctor started stitching me up before the local anesthesia could start working, I would not get to reflect on me NDE until the next day.

While the NDE was bizarre, it wasn’t life changing. I suppose it should be, though, because if I am going to re-live my life again when I die, I should be pursuing more pleasures and spend less time worrying or being stress-out over life’s little challenges. Then again, was it really an NDE? How close was I to dying? The anecdotal evidence surrounding NDE’s implies some truly strange things happen in the brain when one is near death, but should it mean anything beyond possibly being the brain’s one last gasp to save itself? While I can certainly see an evolutionary reason why some NDE’er experience extreme happiness during an NDE, I don’t see why other NDE’ers would experience extreme sorrow or have an experience such as mine. To be clear, I am not trying to make a case for an afterlife here, just that such experiences deserve a great deal more research. Undoubtedly, such research will either be extremely pleasing to theists, or, just the opposite. Unlike many atheists, I do think this avenue of research deserves to be pursued if for no other reason than it will help us to understand the brain.

I am thankful for my experience. When I reflect on it, knowing what I know now, I remind myself that I need to spend more time on sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll and a little less time being mean to Justin Bieber.

What Robin Williams Death Say About Us

Like everyone else with a conscious, I do not care about the details surrounding the death of comedian and actor Robin Williams. I do not care at all how he died. The facts of how he died do not change the fact that this influential comedian is dead. But the sad thing is, those of us with a conscious are in the minority. For every one person who claims to be upset at the details released by the media, there are ten people whose appetite to know is exactly the reason why the media releases such information. I agree when people say, “Let’s honor this man by remembering and focusing on his history in the performing arts.” If only most people would take it just that far.

 

Instead of being content to simply remember Robin Williams, many people are taking the man’s death to focus on the ‘illness’ of depression. Depression is not an illness, though; depression is a deviation from our normal chemical balance (or homeostasis, or baseline, or whatever you want to call it). Depression is no more an illness than happiness. Sure, extreme depression is a serious condition because it may lead to suicide, but extreme happiness is a serious condition as well – just observe any member of a cult. If Robin Williams was in a state of suffering so great that he decided suicide was his only way out, well, it was his decision to make; no one else’s. I may not agree that suicide is a reasonable solution to one’s problems, but because I personally don’t like it doesn’t give me a logical reason to categorize simple depression as an illness. Those of us who have never taken our own lives due to severe depression (which would be everyone reading this) doesn’t know what it’s like to be in such a state that the conviction it takes to take one’s own life is actually there. We are not Robin Williams. We do not know what he was going through. Should he have sought help? Maybe he did. We do not know. It shouldn’t matter.

Then there’s the goddamn conspiracy theorists who are taking this opportunity to suspect that 1) It wasn’t a suicide because 2) they can’t fathom why someone would kill themselves or can’t fathom the conviction it takes or because 3) the media is trying to cover up other major world news events. As a mentioned just a few sentences ago, none of us know what it was like to be in the actor’s shoes, so just because we can’t fathom the why’s or how’s of suicide does not mean foul play is afoot. In thinking the media is trying cover some other important bit of news is preposterous; imagine all the major news network owners getting together and saying, “Wow, first this shit with Russia and now ISIS is really fucking up things in the Middle East. People are getting scared. We’d better kill off a celebrity and distract the public. Who can we get to?” You really have to be a moron to concoct a narrative like that. What I love/hate about conspiracy theorists is that they insist there’s a conspiracy to use fear to control the masses, while they themselves use fear to try and sell you on the idea that there’s a conspiracy.

In the end, it is the end of Robin Williams. I will fondly remember his stand-up comedy, him as Mork from Ork and the creep from One Hour Photo. I don’t care how he died. I care about the art he made.