Dr. Jean Holden has done a detailed study of reports from around the world.
She says that as medical technology advances, more and more people are receiving CPR from what used to be fatal injuries. All the evidence she has seen suggests that there is a part of our consciousness that can exist independently of our physical bodies. Dr. Jean Holden describes the case of a senior surgeon from Wyoming, USA named Dr. Mary Neal, who was trapped underwater for almost half an hour in a boating accident. "I could feel my spirit peeling out of my body," Dr. Neal said at the time. "I got up and came out of the water and was immediately greeted by a group of people, entities, spirits." Dr. Neal claimed to have seen "Pardise," where she was warned about her son's death in a car accident 10 years later. She said: "We are bringing people back from the brink of death in numbers unprecedented in human history, so the opportunity for people to have near-death experiences is also increasing." Skeptics have offered fewer supernatural explanations for near-death experiences. Dr. Holden says none of them fit the facts. She says science works by measuring theories against things we see in the world around us. But now, she says, "it can also happen with the invisible world." "We are not in a state of denial," says Dr. Holden. "We know that there is a possibility that we are not alone." "No one is going to be able to predict the future. "It is very, very difficult to predict what the future will hold." "It's a very exciting time for us," says Holden, "but it's also very scary."