57(55/2) 
Terrifying accounts of gravely
ill people who claim to have been dragged to the gates of hell by demons are to
be studied scientifically for the first time by a British psychologist.The
existence of so-called Near Death Experiences (NDEs), in which dying people
report having mystical sensations before being resuscitated, is now widely
accepted by doctors and scientists. Their cause is unknown, but they typically
involve a feeling of deep peace, followed by a sensation of floating up through
a tunnel towards a bright light and into a beautiful kingdom.
But it is now becoming clear that for some people, NDEs are far from blissful. Instead of a feeling of floating upwards, they report being pulled downwards - towards a pit inhabited by demons. The experiences of Evelyn Hazell, a London-based art historian, as she fought for life against meningitis, are typical. "I had reached a critical stage in the illness and was hovering between life and death - I was aware of being involved in an intense and very real struggle for my life," she told The Telegraph. "A three-legged being - rather like the Isle of Man symbol - was pulling both my legs down to infinite depths. I knew without doubt that if I relaxed and gave in I would be dead. I believe this struggle went on for some considerable time and I eventually managed to break away from whatever it was pulling me down."
Mrs Hazell went on to make a full recovery, but she has never forgotten her terrifying ordeal at the very threshold of death. "I do not believe it was a dream or hallucination. In every way I was lucid - I was just terribly ill. If nothing else, it did prove to me that in certain situations refusing to fight an illness will lead to death." A similar experience continues to haunt Jane, a woman who fought for life after a miscarriage. "It was an awful feeling - like I was going down a big hole and I couldn't get up. I was going into this big pit. I was going further and further down, and trying to claw my way back up and kept slipping."...
Views : 975
View: 
The story of the "death" of the 20th-century philosopher, Alfred Jules (A. J.) Ayer, is becoming legendary. When the renowned atheist choked on a piece of salmon in 1988 in a British hospital, he went into cardiac arrest and technically died for four minutes. As a leader of the dominant analytic school of philosophy, Ayer had been accused of "neutralizing" Western academic philosophers; encouraging them to focus on pure logic and avoid applying their big minds to the actual art of living. And dying. But Ayer's near-death experience changed all that. After he was resuscitated in hospital, Ayer wrote a piece in the Telegraph newspaper describing wondrous images he had while "dead" -- of a beckoning red light and the collapse of space and time. 
