The Terminal Experiment - Robert J. Sawyer Page 0,23
of peace? Encounters with dead loved ones?”
“Yes.”
Sarkar nodded. “It is only when taken as one big thing that NDEs are inexplicable. The individual components are easy to understand. For instance, do this: close your eyes and picture yourself at dinner last night.”
Peter closed his eyes. “Okay.”
“What do you see?”
“I see me and Cathy at Kelsey’s on Keele Street.”
“Don’t you ever eat at home?”
“Well, not often,” said Peter.
“DINKs,” said Sarkar, shaking his head—double income, no kids. “Anyway, realize what you just said: you picture yourself and Cathy.”
“That’s right.”
“You are seeing yourself. The image you conjure up isn’t from the point of view of your eyes, a meter and half off the floor or however high up they are when you’re sitting down. It’s a picture of yourself as seen from outside your own body.”
“Well, I guess it is, at that.”
“Most human memory and dream imagery is ‘out of body.’ That’s the way our minds work both when recalling things that really happened and in fantasizing. There’s nothing mystical about it.”
Peter was having another heart-attack kit. He rearranged the slices of smoked meat on the rye bread. “But people claim to be able to see things they couldn’t possibly have seen, like the manufacturer’s name on the light unit mounted above their hospital bed.”
Sarkar nodded. “Yeah, there are reports like that, but they aren’t crisp—they don’t stand up to scrutiny. One case involved a man who worked for a company that manufactured hospital lighting: he had recognized a competitor’s unit. Others involve patients who had been ambulatory before or after the NDE and had had plenty of time to check out the details for themselves. Also, many times the reports are either unverifiable, such as ‘I saw a fly sitting on top of the x-ray machine,’ or just flat-out wrong, such as ‘there was a vent on the top of the respirator,’ when in fact there was no vent at all.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” said Sarkar. He smiled. “I know what to get you for Christmas this year: a subscription to The Skeptical Inquirer.”
“What’s that?”
“A journal published by The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. They blow holes in this sort of thing all the time.”
“Hmm. What about the tunnel?”
“Have you ever had a migraine?”
“No. My father used to get them, though.”
“Ask him. Tunnel vision is common in severe headaches, in anoxia, and lots of other conditions.”
“I guess. But I’d heard that the tunnel was maybe a recollection of the birth canal.”
Sarkar waved his soup spoon in Peter’s direction. “Ask any woman who’s had a baby if the birth canal is even remotely like a tunnel with a wide opening and a bright light at the end. The baby is surrounded by contracting walls of muscle; there’s no tunnel. Plus, people who were delivered by Caesarean section have recounted the NDE tunnel as well, so it can’t be some sort of actual memory.”
“Hmm. What about the bright light at the end of the tunnel?”
“Lack of oxygen causes overstimulation of the visual cortex. Normally, most of the neurons in that cortex are prevented from firing. When oxygen levels drop, the first thing to cease functioning is the disinhibitory chemicals. The result is a perception of bright light.”
“And the life review?”
“Didn’t you take a seminar once at the Montreal Neurological Institute?”
“Umm—yes.”
“And who was the most famous doctor associated with that institute?”
“Wilder Penfield, I guess.”
“You guess,” said Sarkar. “He’s on a bloody stamp, after all. Yes, Penfield, who did work on directly stimulating the brain. He found it easy to elicit vivid memories of long-forgotten things. Again, in an anoxia situation, the brain is more active than normal because of the loss of disinhibitors. Neural nets are firing left and right. So the flooding of the brain with images from the past makes perfect sense.”
“And the sense of peace?”
“Natural endorphins, of course.”
“Hmm. But what about the visions of long-dead friends? The woman I spoke to saw her dead twin sister, Mary, who had died shortly after birth.”
“Did she see an infant?”
“No, she described the vision as looking like herself.”
“The brain isn’t stupid,” said Sarkar. “It knows when it may be about to die. That naturally gets one thinking about people who are already dead. Here is the crisp point, though: there are cases of little children having near-death experiences. Do you know who they see visions of?”
Peter shook his head.
“Their parents or their playmates. People who are still alive. Children don’t know anyone who has already died. If the NDE really was a window