Norman
Van Rooy
(left), the producer of the NDE documentary
Shadows: Perceptions
of Near-Death Experiencers,
sums it up this way: "It all begins for us at
birth. We are thrust from the womb onto the
carousel of life, carried away in a blur of
activities from childhood to adulthood and then
to old age. Each of us have our dreams, our
relationships and we go to school; we work and
play, day after day, week after week, year after
year. Life is certainly busy. And yet we tend
not to think about the fact of our inevitable
death. It doesn't seem to make any sense that
we will no longer exist as we know it. The fact
is we will die and there is no way to avoid
it. Like the child being born, we have no choice
but to yield ourselves to the unknown. Like
the seventy billion who have already passed
this way through life, we will join their ranks
at the rate of 130,000 a day. And in that same
day, 400,000 new lives will be born. The cycle
of life and death continues at an ever-increasing
pace. The fear of death has given rise to a
host of speculations about an afterlife. Religions,
philosophies and cults have multiplied over
the millennia, all trying to answer our need
for comfort about this seemingly absurd fate
that awaits each of us. And now science has
turned its gaze toward the matter of death."
|