Review: Charting the gray area between life and death
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 6, 2012
Death is one of those topics about which my feelings are mixed. Well, maybe not death per se. No doubt that our physical bodies can and do cease to function from any number of causes. But what about after that? Do we have a consciousness or soul that survives and passes on to some other realm after our physical bodies have ceased all the chemical and electrical reactions that we associate with life?Erika Hayasaki, in her Kindle Single Dead or Alive, poses some provocative questions about Near Death Experiences. She recounts cases of people who claim to have experienced the tunnel, the blinding light, the life review, the meetings with long-gone family and friends or beings of light that many NDE patients claim to have experienced. She also interviews scientific skeptics who dismiss NDEs as chemical or horomonal reactions in a traumatized brain as life seeps away. And she talks with researchers who are beginning to study NDEs in an effort to find scientific, emperical proof for a topic that has always been considered highly subjective.Throughout the Single Hayasaki interweaves the story of Richard, her uncle, who underwent his own NDE. As much as the research into NDEs is compelling and throught-provoking, it is Richard's story that provides the story's heart.I've always had a fascination with NDEs. Years ago I worked in a hospital and was fascinated by some of the stories told by nurses - especially pediatric nurses - who worked with terminally ill patients. While the stories I heard and those that Hayasaki collected in Dead or Alive don't provide absolute, verifiable proof one way or another, they do point to some fascinating clues about the nature of the lives we live.Dead or Alive is fascinating reading for anyone who has lost a loved one or pondered their own mortality. And I'm pretty sure that includes all of us.