- Jun 1, 2004
- 3,007
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Seattle Doctor Specializes In Near-Death Experiences
POSTED: 9:01 am EDT April 30, 2004
UPDATED: 6:14 pm EDT May 4, 2004
The NBC 10 Investigators tracked down a doctor in Seattle whose research may
come closer to anyone else to answering the question, is there life after
death?
Dr. Melvin Morse is a pediatrician who used to think that people who were
interested in near-death experiences just wanted to be on television talk
shows.
But something happened to one of his patients that changed his opinion. Now
he believes the evidence points to something after life.
Most scientists will explain that near-death experiences are caused by the
lack of oxygen in the brain in the last moments of life.
But Dr. Morse believes he's found evidence that it is a glimpse of something
beyond our existence.
"I interviewed a 6-year-old boy," said Dr. Morse. "We resuscitated him. He
opened his eyes and he dramatically said, 'That was weird, two guys just
sucked me back into my body.'"
Dr. Morse is a respected pediatrician. He was a skeptic about the issue of
life after death until he was confronted with a story he couldn't explain
away.
"She was what you would call clinically dead," explained Morse. "She was
under water for 19 minutes."
After the 7-year-old girl was resuscitated, she started drawing pictures.
"What she described to me was not a hallucination. It was a blow-by-blow
accurate description of her own resuscitation, but from a bird's eye point
of view," said Dr. Morse.
The child believed she had to go back to her body to help her mother with
her unborn brother. She drew her unborn brother with a big red heart.
Several months later her brother was born with heart disease.
"How can dying, comatose patients perceive anything? That's what fascinated
me," said Dr. Morse. "I knew that something important about human
consciousness was to be learned."
Dr. Morse has recorded dozens of interviews with children who have
experienced near death. He says he finds the experiences with children to be
the most pure.
Dr. Morse says he doesn't believe in God himself and he has little interest
in the experiences many adults often have reflecting their own religious
beliefs and cultures.
Critics say it is because Christians tend to see Jesus and Indians see Hindu
gods, the near-death experience doesn't seem scientifically credible.
Social worker Kimberly Clark Sharp says she couldn't come to terms with her
own out of body, near-death experience until one of her own patients had
one.
Sharp's patient went into cardiac arrest. After she was resuscitated, the
patient insisted she had risen out of her body and floated up around the
hospital where she saw a blue tennis shoe on the third floor ledge.
To calm down her patient Sharp went to look. "I did find a blue tennis shoe
on the ledge," said Sharp. "She got everything right as she described it to
me."
"It's clear even when people are flat lining in the last moments of life,
something profound is happening," said Dr. Morse. "It is something today's
monitors can't pick up."
Dr. Morse's findings have been published in medical journals and he's
working to see if something physically changes in the right temporal lobe of
the brain when someone has a post-death experience.
"One child told me it was a light who told her who she was and where she was
to go," said Dr. Morse. "I want to interact with that light that tells us
who we are and where we are to go while we're still alive. That to me is a
challenge of the near-death experience."
Dr. Morse believes you can get in touch with that part of the brain through
prayer, meditation, even the rhythmic movement of knitting. There's no
absolute proof, but he believes that people who have that near death
experience are stepping into another realm.
POSTED: 9:01 am EDT April 30, 2004
UPDATED: 6:14 pm EDT May 4, 2004
The NBC 10 Investigators tracked down a doctor in Seattle whose research may
come closer to anyone else to answering the question, is there life after
death?
Dr. Melvin Morse is a pediatrician who used to think that people who were
interested in near-death experiences just wanted to be on television talk
shows.
But something happened to one of his patients that changed his opinion. Now
he believes the evidence points to something after life.
Most scientists will explain that near-death experiences are caused by the
lack of oxygen in the brain in the last moments of life.
But Dr. Morse believes he's found evidence that it is a glimpse of something
beyond our existence.
"I interviewed a 6-year-old boy," said Dr. Morse. "We resuscitated him. He
opened his eyes and he dramatically said, 'That was weird, two guys just
sucked me back into my body.'"
Dr. Morse is a respected pediatrician. He was a skeptic about the issue of
life after death until he was confronted with a story he couldn't explain
away.
"She was what you would call clinically dead," explained Morse. "She was
under water for 19 minutes."
After the 7-year-old girl was resuscitated, she started drawing pictures.
"What she described to me was not a hallucination. It was a blow-by-blow
accurate description of her own resuscitation, but from a bird's eye point
of view," said Dr. Morse.
The child believed she had to go back to her body to help her mother with
her unborn brother. She drew her unborn brother with a big red heart.
Several months later her brother was born with heart disease.
"How can dying, comatose patients perceive anything? That's what fascinated
me," said Dr. Morse. "I knew that something important about human
consciousness was to be learned."
Dr. Morse has recorded dozens of interviews with children who have
experienced near death. He says he finds the experiences with children to be
the most pure.
Dr. Morse says he doesn't believe in God himself and he has little interest
in the experiences many adults often have reflecting their own religious
beliefs and cultures.
Critics say it is because Christians tend to see Jesus and Indians see Hindu
gods, the near-death experience doesn't seem scientifically credible.
Social worker Kimberly Clark Sharp says she couldn't come to terms with her
own out of body, near-death experience until one of her own patients had
one.
Sharp's patient went into cardiac arrest. After she was resuscitated, the
patient insisted she had risen out of her body and floated up around the
hospital where she saw a blue tennis shoe on the third floor ledge.
To calm down her patient Sharp went to look. "I did find a blue tennis shoe
on the ledge," said Sharp. "She got everything right as she described it to
me."
"It's clear even when people are flat lining in the last moments of life,
something profound is happening," said Dr. Morse. "It is something today's
monitors can't pick up."
Dr. Morse's findings have been published in medical journals and he's
working to see if something physically changes in the right temporal lobe of
the brain when someone has a post-death experience.
"One child told me it was a light who told her who she was and where she was
to go," said Dr. Morse. "I want to interact with that light that tells us
who we are and where we are to go while we're still alive. That to me is a
challenge of the near-death experience."
Dr. Morse believes you can get in touch with that part of the brain through
prayer, meditation, even the rhythmic movement of knitting. There's no
absolute proof, but he believes that people who have that near death
experience are stepping into another realm.
Albert Einstein believed that when the body dies, where does the energy go? Before I knew of Einsteins theory, I asked the same question. I said to myself, "If everything is made of a certain frequency of energy and when we are alive, we are full of energy, what happens when we die? It's not like we blow up and the burst of energy is released..."
