Well, I was a young doctor, a materialist cardiologist, and when I started to work in a coronary care unit in 1969 as a young rotating intern, I was working in one of the first coronary care units in the Netherlands. Before 1967, all patients died of cardiac arrest.

So modern CPR techniques like defibrillation and external chest compression were becoming available in '68, '69. So we had a patient on the new coronary care unit, about 44 years old I think, and he had a cardiac arrest because of a viral infection.

And we started to resuscitate him and we had several shocks on him, and after about four minutes he regained consciousness. We were very happy as a resident. It was all new. I was the doctor in charge. It was all new for us.

But the patient came back and the patient was extremely disappointed and told me about a tunnel and a light and music and a beautiful landscape. Um, I never forget, I've forgotten this event, but I never did anything with it. I was a young doctor starting my specialization, a young family, a family with young children, so um...

Only in 1986, I read a book by George Ritchie, "Return from Tomorrow", where he described his very deep near-death experience as a medical student in 1943. He died of a double pneumonia and there were no antibiotics available for this medical student, so he died and his body was covered with a sheet.

And the nurse was so upset that his young medical student had died that he was able to persuade the doctor to give him an injection of adrenaline.

into his heart, which was quite uncommon in that time. But after nine minutes of death, he came back. He had the problem to find his body back because it was covered with the sheet, but he had his hand out under the sheet. But he saw his fertility

ring. He thought that must be me, but he had a very impressive, the experience, all the aspects we know now. He had also, in, in, in, in dark regions as well, out-of-body experiences in, in a place hundreds of miles where, where this happened. And he later went there to see

if it really was the place where he, he had been. He had been there as well during the period of death. So then I was so, and I had never heard about the death experience before. I never read the book by Raymond Moody, *Life After Life*. It was

published in 1975, but from reading that book, I started to ask patients who had survived the cardiac arrest if they could remember something from the period of unconsciousness, from the period of cardiac arrest. And within two years, out of 50 patients who had survived cardiac arrest, 12 patients shared the

experience with me. And it was the moment that my scientific curiosity started to grow because I had learned at university, as we all learn still at school and university, that consciousness is a product of brain function. Even though we're kind of grasped when you're deep in unconsciousness, no

body reflexes, no brain stem reflexes, no breathing. And I come to it later, then it should be impossible to have memories of an enhanced consciousness with memories, with emotions, with cognition, with a positive of perception out and above the body. It should be impossible. That's been just

retrospective studies and people thought it was a side effect of drugs, hallucinations, a side effect of neurotransmitters, uh, dreams trying to be interpreted, etc. So there were not real scientific explanations at all, and that's why we started a prospective study in on survivors of cardiac

arrest. When, when was it the moment that you really went from, from being convinced that consciousness is a byproduct of brain activity to somebody who's saying, 'No, that's not the case.' Was it a specific moment? It took years, years. It took years. So we did a

prospective study of four years, uh, where we interviewed 344 consecutive survivors of cardiac arrest in 10 hospitals. So we spoke to a lot of patients as well, but besides that, I spoke to other patients with and the, as well, and had a longitudinal study which

taped interviews two years and eight years with all late survivors of cardiac arrest who had an NDE with a matched control group of patients who survived cardiac arrest without an NDE. The matched control is the same age, the same gender, and the same time interval. And it was about the

transformation. People have a transformation, but they have an NDE, and we didn't know if they had a transformation due to the cardiac arrest or due to the NDE. That's never been studied in a prospective design before. So I've met many, many people, and

during the course of years, I rather became convinced, also by reading articles and books, etc., that it should be impossible to explain these kinds of experiences by just claiming the never proven assumption that consciousness is a byproduct of brain function. It's still a

never proven by hypothesis, but everybody believes it's true. It has never been proven.

How Dr. Pim van Lommel Stopped Believing Materialism | Consciousness is NOT a Product of the Brain

Essentia Foundation

초기 경력 및 근사 체험과의 첫 만남

네덜란드에서 유물론적 심장학자로 초기 경력을 쌓았습니다.

1969년 환자의 임사 체험(NDE)을 직접 경험했습니다.

환자를 소생시키는 데 성공했습니다.

터널, 빛, 음악, 아름다운 풍경을 포함한 환자의 NDE에 대한 설명.

조지 리치 저서의 영향과 추가 연구

1986년 조지 리치의 '내일로부터의 귀환'을 읽고 있습니다.

임상 사망 9분 후 Ritchie의 자세한 NDE 계정.

레이몬드 무디의 '인생 후의 삶'을 읽고 심정지 생존자에 대한 질문을 이어나갑니다.

50명의 환자 중 12명이 NDE 경험을 공유했습니다.

의식에 대한 기존의 이해에 도전하기

관찰된 NDE와 의식이 전적으로 뇌 기능의 산물이라는 믿음 사이의 모순.

NDE를 약물 부작용이나 환각으로 설명하는 기존의 설명에 대한 비판.

NDE 생존자에 대한 전향적 연구 시작.

전향적인 연구와 변화하는 신념

344명의 심정지 생존자를 대상으로 한 4년간의 전향적 연구.

2년과 8년 후 인터뷰를 통한 종단 연구.

NDE가 있는 환자와 없는 환자가 경험한 변화에 집중하세요.

NDE를 뇌 기능으로만 설명할 수 없다는 확신이 커지고 있습니다.

의식이 뇌 기능의 부산물이라는 가설의 입증되지 않은 본질을 강조합니다.