

She was trapped beneath the surface, and as water filled her lungs, she knew she was going to die. When NDERF contributor Laurie was 19 years old, she was swept into rapids on a rafting trip. This is what professionals who have seen many people through their final moments want us to know. Now she’s cancer-free and is a public speaker and author of books like What If This Is Heaven?. Two days later, her organs started to regain function and the tumours started shrinking. Unconditional love.” About 30 hours after falling into a coma, Moorjani flickered back into consciousness. And I felt as though I was enveloped in this feeling of just love. It was just incredible because, for the first time, all the pain had gone. “But I felt I didn’t want to turn back because it was so beautiful. “He said that I’ve gone as far as I can, and if I go any further, I won’t be able to turn back,” she said. She couldn’t see her late father himself, but she did feel his presence, and he had a message for her. Initially, she felt like she was floating above her body with “360-degree peripheral vision” of the hospital room and beyond, she told TODAY. Doctors were sure it was the end – not realising that in her near-death state, she still had a consciousness. Then, as I was saying to myself, ‘This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had’ – slam! I was back.” (Weird side note: The doctor who revived Cicoria became overwhelmed with the urge to play and write piano music.) This is what a near-death experience feels like, according to science.Īfter a four-year battle with lymphatic cancer, Anita Moorjani slipped into a coma in 2006. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up… There was speed and direction. “The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me. “Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light … an enormous feeling of wellbeing and peace,” he told the New Yorker. Just a fact.Īfter watching a woman start CPR, Cicoria moved on, floating up the stairs to see his kids getting their faces painted, realising that they’d be OK. Cicoria turned around to see his own body lying on the ground. He felt his body fly backward – and then, confusingly, forward. He hadn’t realised there’d been a lightning storm brewing. They’d hung up but he still had the phone in his hand when a blue flash came out.


In 1994, orthopaedic surgeon Tony Cicoria called his mum from a pay phone during a lake house trip.
