I had an out of body experience once, but it wasn't a NDE.
I was in my 20's, and I dreamed I was flying above a car that was driving through trees and mountains. You know, like in a car commercial. Then the car turned one way and I just kept flying out over the landscape.
Then I was suddenly back, but not all the way in my body. I seemed to be floating over the bed, about
2 feet above my body, on my back, facing the ceiling. I couldn't get down. I tried to shout out to someone in an adjacent room, and that's when I collapsed down into myself.
I think that my experience was related to sleep paralysis--my conscious mind was waking before voluntary muscle control. The same thing that used to make people believe in succubi. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus ) This is sometimes called ASP--Awareness during Sleep Paralysis.
I am skeptical by nature, and that includes NDEs, but I try to keep an
open mind. I'm interested in Sam Parnia's new book which touches upon NDEs, and the nature of death itself.
Did anyone read the NYT magazine piece about
Nora Ephron's death? Not long before she died, she said something intriguing.
"'In, out, in, out,' she said, waving her hands at the windows. Also: 'This is it,' which she said in a tone that seemed to be half-question, half-declaration."
www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/nora-ephrons-final-act.htmlAnd then there were Steve Jobs' final words, as recorded by his sister: "Oh wow oh wow oh wow".
Things like that, and the fact that dying patients often go through the motions of packing for a journey, and see loved ones waiting...make me wonder. For days before she died, my grandmother talked to her mother as if she were in the room. Her mother had died decades before. Just hallucinating, I think. But I'm not sure.
I try to stay humble. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, I'm sure.