Approaching death is accompanied by a vision of the faces of the deceased or mythical creatures. At the same time, one can imagine the places to which the human soul must move after the onset of death. According to the scriptures, near-death visions are in many ways similar to each other, radically different from all human prejudices in this regard.
The point of studying visions of death is (according to most researchers) to prove the existence of soul life in another world, regardless of the material body. Regardless of the fact that all over the planet people believe in the presence of a subtle body in man, which is capable of maintaining its activity after physical death, the West prefers to believe that death is the certain end for the human personality.
There are references to visions before death in biographies and other literary sources of most eras. They became officially interested in the last century. The pioneers in this area were W. Maers, E. Gurney, F. Podmore, as well as D. Heyslop. They collected stories from people who witnessed visions of death at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The first systematic study of these phenomena was organized at the dawn of the 20th century by Sir W. Barett, a famous person in the field of physics and the study of the secrets of the human psyche. Barrett drew attention to these visions in 1924, when his wife, an expert in the field of obstetrics, told about one patient who, shortly before her death, spoke about incredibly beautiful places and about her late relatives - her sister and father, who were there. The girl accepted all the visions as real reality, instantly calming down. As soon as the baby, who was barely born, was delivered to her, she began to think out loud that, perhaps, for his well-being it would be worth staying a little longer in this world, but after that she said:
“I can't bear to be here. If you only knew what I witnessed, you would easily agree with me...” What surprised Barett more than anything else was that the girl, as it turned out, was not even aware of the death of her sister, which had occurred a month earlier. At the same time, she firmly stated that the ghosts of dead relatives came to her, one of whom was her sister.
Many years later, K. Ozis, who managed the studies of the Elin Zh. Garett Parapsychology Foundation, showed attention to Barett’s works. Under the auspices of this organization in 1959-1960, and then under the guise of the American Circle of Psychical Research in the 60s and 70s, he, in conversations with doctors, accumulated information about countless visions of people awaiting death, not only in the USA, but also in India. Ozis made a trip there in the early 70s together with E. Haroldson. At least a thousand stories from the total pile of data obtained were examined in great detail. The results of the work done were emphasized by Barett’s conclusions, and in addition, by the statements of scientists who dealt with terminally ill and already dying people. All the results also agree with the information on the sensations of death provided by R. Moody, K. Ring and others.
Visions before death occur more often in slowly dying patients, say, due to an inevitable illness or severe injuries. In the same way, visions are extremely rarely observed in cases of rapid death (for example, from a heart attack). A significant part of the visions consists of the appearance of deceased relatives, friends or strangers who come in bright, shining outfits. Sometimes there are various mythical personalities and saints (such as Christ, Krishna, all sorts of Angels and others). All messengers have one goal - to show the way and lead the dying person along. Actually, these creatures help the transition to death. Usually, in the process of vision, people have a feeling of joy and peace. They want to follow the guide, especially for people who believe in life after death. (It must be said that such visions appear before death equally to those who believe and those who do not believe in the existence of the world of the dead.) In cases where a person was despondent and melancholy, or experienced terrible pain, visions often completely changed his mood. Often the physical pain even went away. Already almost in the clutches of death, the man begins to burn with fun and happiness.
The appearance of guides does not at all make it difficult for the dying person to have a normal sense of the real world and the living people around him, who almost never witness dying visions. About 30% of visions of death consist in the fact that right before the eyes of the dying person, another world is blossoming, which for him is no different from our reality. Often in stories you can come across gigantic gardens of unimaginable beauty. There are cases when gates, doors, water crossings and other things appearing in front of people, indicating a transition. Sometimes palaces or similar complex architectural structures appeared before death. Almost all visions stand out for their richness and color. Fairy-tale corners from an unknown world are simultaneously filled with the faces of the deceased or other spirits. Visions cansimply play out in the imagination of the suicide bomber, or they can also pull him inside, moving him to these beautiful places. The standard response of the human mind is a feeling of harmony and tranquility, the joy of traveling to places unknown to ordinary people. It is extremely rare that visions contain features of religious judgments about death. For example, Osis presents only a single case where a dying girl spoke about a place reminiscent of the underworld, but it must be said that she was tormented by many bad deeds committed during her life.
In some episodes collected by Osis, people heard a beautiful melody before death. The information studied is such that during the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, on the threshold of death, people heard songs and music somewhat more often, but over time, news of this phenomenon passed. It is possible that this is due to the importance of music in the lives of people of that time.
The main duration of visions fluctuates around four minutes, 15% of them last 5-12 minutes, another 15% last longer than an hour. Basically, visions begin very shortly before death: 3/4 of the people whose testimony was recorded died within 10 minutes after the visions, others lasted another couple of hours. In a couple of episodes, one person had visions more than once, every day, as if preparing him for a meeting with death. One gets the feeling that the presence or absence of visions of death is almost in no way determined by the physical condition of a person. There were also cases when patients who seemed to be recovering began to have visions, after which they fell into a coma and died.
There is some similarity between visions before death and abnormal feelings: the dying person begins to realize the presence of something sublime, grace and inspiration. Although such things appear infrequently and are not easy to convey in ordinary language.
Scientists have proposed a lot of theories designed to find a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon of visions of death. Medications, high fever of patients, hallucinations caused by illness, lack of air, realization of hidden and instinctive desires, some loss of reason - this is just a small list of assumptions made. In fact, any of the above points can give rise to hallucinations, however, they do not at all relate to the existence of the world of the dead, therefore they mainly create visions that are tightly intertwined with the patient’s real life. Haroldson's studies revealed that visions of death occur in people who are sane. It is impossible to interpret the nature of the unfolding spectacles using medical factors. The guess of the presence of hidden desires does not inspire confidence either, since the visions almost do not indicate the thoughts of the sick, and moreover, they do not bypass even people who sincerely desire to be cured.
There is a certain connection between the visions of a person doomed to death and the visions of someone looking after him. According to the assurances of individual workers in medical institutions, it happened that at the moment of death of a person, a substance of a light gray hue appeared above him. Sometimes this substance maintained a connection with the material body through some kind of “wiring”, and outlined the outline of its subtle body. The connection disappeared at the very last moment - at the second of death. Some people claimed that guides came to them during their lifetime. They were both deceased relatives and holy personalities. These stories are contained in the works of the earliest researchers of the human psyche. They do not agree with the conclusions Osis and Haroldson obtained in subsequent studies. In their opinion, living people are not able to notice the subtle bodies of guides. A very likely explanation for the resulting discrepancy is the fact that at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, a huge number of people died at home. The cozy, familiar atmosphere and the presence of close relatives nearby probably became the reason for the described visions of death.
Conducting further research in the field of visions before death can bring many benefits to thanatology (the science of death, its properties, features and causes). The phenomenon in question should reduce people's fear of death. Among some peoples, death has been developed to a real science. As proof, let's take the ancient Western mysterious traditions or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is very sad that some people see death as something terrible and try as best they can to delay its onset, often with very unpleasant and, by and large, meaningless methods. Maybe someday people will still understand that death is not the end.
