Full Description
Explores the extraordinary states of expanded consciousness that arise during comas, both positive and negative
Every day around the world, thousands of people are placed in medically-induced comas. For some coma survivors, the experience is an utter blank. Others lay paralyzed, aware of everything around them but unable to move, speak, or even blink. Many experience alternate lives spanning decades, lives they grieve once awakened. Some encounter ultra-vivid nightmares, while others undergo a deep, spiritual oneness with the Universe or say they have glimpsed the Afterlife.
Examining the beautiful and disturbing experiences of those who have survived comas, Alan and Beverley Pearce explore the mysterious levels of consciousness this near-death experience unlocks. They demonstrate how a key element of the brain is switched off by coma-inducing sedatives, allowing the mind to break free from the body and experience a greater expansion of consciousness. Revealing the dangers of deep sedation and other intensive care procedures, the authors show how comas are unnecessary more often than not and that many coma survivors go on to suffer lasting cognitive and physical harm. Exploring proven alternatives to medically-induced coma, they share tried and tested protocols that are safer for critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families.
Showing how we can avoid the suffering caused by comas, this book reveals the wide variety of conscious states that can arise during comas, both positive and negative, and how accepting the reality of these experiences is crucial not only to the recovery of coma survivors, but also to the field of consciousness and NDE studies.
Contents
Foreword
A Wake-Up Call by E. Wesley Ely, MD Contributor's
Preface
Coma and Consciousness: The Yawning Abyss by Jeffrey J. Kripal
Introduction
A Whole Other Life
PART 1
A World More Vivid than Life Itself
1 You're Not Just Sleeping Your Time Away
From Confusion and Bliss to the Gates of Hell
2 Fantasies, Dreams, and Lucky Guesses
Or Something That We Have Known All Along?
3 Blinded by Science
And an Awakening to Other Possibilities
PART 2
Shining a Light on the Dimensions of Consciousness
4 The Chattering Monkey
And the Strange Things That Happen When Parts of the Brain Switch Off
5 Delirium, Hallucinations, and Something Else
Other Realities and How to Obtain Them
6 Apaches and Poets
A Reality Greater than a Mind Could Possibly Bear
7 Dark Brings Light
Touching the Void
PART 3
The Reality of Life after Coma
8 The ICU Death Trap
How Did We Ever Get It So Wrong?
9 The Awake and Walking ICU
And How Some People Never Learned Their ABCs
10 So, Who's Going to Pay for All This?
(Every One of Us, Unless We Bring about Change) Afterword
A Call to Arms by Kali Dayton, DNP, AGACNP-BC
Acknowledgments
Useful Links
Notes
Bibliography
Index
