The Final Border: Peter Fenwick at TEDxBerlin

Transcriber: Nadine Hennig Reviewer: Ellen Maloney Good afternoon. (Laughs) This is the

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frontier. You are all going to die. Most of you are afraid. Why are you afraid? Because you don't know what's going to happen. I suppose many of you think it will be like this: that the Grim Reaper will come and take you away. No, it's not. It's much more like what a man thinks: "I thought she was going to be my mom." In reality, our data shows that she will probably be your mother, or a group of dead relatives, happy dead relatives, who come to pick you up.

So what do we really know about death? In the 1970s, Raymond Moody published a book. This was a fantastic book. He told wonderful stories about people in America who, after cardiac arrest, came back, went down a tunnel, stumbled upon a beam of light, and all that kind of stuff. Oh come on, it had to be stupid. This was California, which would never cross into the UK, no. So you can imagine my surprise, when a guy came into my office who had a failed catheter, a cardiac catheter, and had a near-death experience. It was the moment I realized that, in fact, these things happened, but it was so much more important than that.

If what this guy was saying was true, then we could start thinking about what death could really mean. And then I had to start studying and looking at death. First of all, this was the near-death experience. Now I discovered that it happened in England. I went to various hospitals and talked to people, so I appeared on the BBC and in two films in the 1980s, and I received over a thousand, not two thousand, letters. Do you remember the letters? They are quite funny, you can read them. (Laughter) Well, these letters were written by people who had never told anyone about their experiences before. "Because?" I said, "Too scared." They told their wives or husbands, they weren't interested.

They told their friends and they said, "You're crazy." They were very relieved to be able to put them on paper and I was very pleased because I was then able to study them and understand what the near-death experience was all about. What we found is that it was, in fact, very similar to that suggested by Raymond Moody. First of all, you lose pain, if you feel pain. Then you become very calm. And then some people leave their body, others go down a tunnel, a fascinating tunnel, it varies, and at the end of the tunnel, there is a speck of light.

If you can move towards the speck of light, it gets bigger and bigger, very, very bright. When you enter the speck of light, it envelops you as an experience of full light. And it is calming, compassionate, loving, supportive, amazing. And in the light is the being of light. And the being of light may speak to you, it may not. What you do then is that you can get a review of your life. If you step out of the light, you may get a life review. Very interesting because you can see exactly what you have done before, review all the things you have done and understand why you did them.

Then you will enter a space, and that space is usually, in our culture, in the UK, an English country garden. Come on, it's lovely. (Laughs) Beautiful flowers, birdsong. I can tell you that spiders, snakes, etc. have never been seen there. So, it is a wonderful experience. And walking through the garden, there are dead relatives. They will greet you. Some of them will send you back. And you will reach a point where you will know that it is a

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of some kind and that if you cross it, you will not return. This is important because at that moment you have to make a decision: are you going to continue and never come back, or are you going to come back.

Some people decide to return because they have families, children, that kind of thing. Others are returned by the being of light. And others, family members will say: "Come back. It's not your time yet." Then people find themselves in the hospital again. Now, what kinds of things cause the near-death experience? Well, illnesses, operations, accidents, all that kind of stuff. But this is not of much help to us, because you cannot study the brain function of these people if you take them from accidents or births. You see, everything is different. So what you have to do is try to get the brain in the same state.

Now, heart attack is the most obvious. In a heart attack, the heart stops, there is obviously no breathing, and all brainstem reflexes have disappeared. Then you are clinically dead. So, we know what state the brain is in. So it's a very, very good model for looking at near-death experiences. In our sample, we had about nine percent of people who had near-death experiences during their heart attack. Now, was this really true? Could we see him in the hospital? So we set up a study at Southampton Hospital, looked at 69 people who had suffered cardiac arrest and found that just under nine per cent of people had had a near-death experience.

As was? Now, we could really see it. Very similar to the ones we had seen? Yes, it occurs in cardiac arrest. Now, if that's true, when does it happen? You see, NDErs say, the experience occurs when you are unconscious. Now, if that's true, that you can have these experiences when you're unconscious and the brain isn't working, then that would be a very good model for the beginnings of death. Science says: "This is impossible, this is ridiculous: Fenwick, go home!" Because the argument is that consciousness is created by the brain. So if I tell you that the brain doesn't work and there is consciousness there, it doesn't easily fit into our modern scientific paradigm.

So we take a deeper look at this. I have drawn you a caricature of what happens to consciousness when the heart stops. You see, awareness is high at first. The heart stops, there is a rapid fall from consciousness to unconsciousness. So the experience cannot happen then. When the heart restarts, it's confusing. People don't know where they are, what's going on, that kind of thing. But the near-death experience is very, very lucid, very clear. And so this confusing excitement means it can't happen then. So when does it happen? They say NDEs happen when they are unconscious. So we maintain that they are possibly right and that this is the time when this happens.

You have to understand that this goes against our current understanding of science, but you still have to run with the data, not with the current model, if it seems to be wrong. Now, if what I have told you is correct, then it means that the near-death experience is a good model for the dying process. Everyone would agree with that. So let's look at death and see what it is like. So what we did was go to nursing homes and hospices. We spoke to the palliative care teams. We did this in the UK, we did this in Holland and our questionnaire was given to people in Ireland.

We've come up with a lot of ideas about what really happens when you die. But much more than that, I went to radio and television and got stories. I have over 1,500 stories about what people say happens when you die. So what I'm going to do now is tell you some of these stories about what happens when you die. So let's start with the first stage, which is premonitions. Here is a story about someone who had a premonition. A premonition means that you know you are going to die. "I was perplexed when my husband, who is a young man in good health, suddenly began to put all his affairs in order." So he's young, he has a family. "He wrote his will and told me he was going to die.

I laughed. But three months later, he was doing a routine flight and the plane crashed." In fact, he died and it seems that was a warning to him. He also said that he completed everything that he had come into this world to do. Although I'm not sure I understand exactly what that means. So let's take a photo. You will see premonitions on the left side of your screen. That is the first stage of dying. Now, another very common occurrence is deathbed visions. In reality, they are in all cultures, they are not specific to our culture. Their content tends to go with the culture to a certain extent, but in our culture they are totally fascinating.

What usually happens is that the deceased relative comes into the room where you are and talks to you. They are a great support, very useful. They say they will be with you when you die. So here's a story, just to remind you: do you all know that Giotto fresco? Wouldn't all men wish they were Saint Francis and got those beautiful angels to come take care of them? Well, we're not San Francisco. This is the kind of thing, the kind of stories we get: "He spent about four hours talking to two men" - this is in a hospice - "switching his gaze between two different places in the room.

One of them was his brother." ". that he had died the previous year, and the other was someone older, perhaps his grandfather. During all this time she was very cheerful, happy and extremely lucid, unlike the rest of the time. The conversation ended with her saying goodbye to her. to them." Now, who sees this? Well, the dying, obviously, sometimes family members, more often children, very occasionally hospice staff. That's why they tend to be seen primarily by the dying. So we can put the next deathbed visions. But one thing you should know, and remember this, is that some of them say that they are going to return on a particular day to help you with the dying process, to help you cross the

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.

And if you know, you can ask them if they would probably come back a few days later. You can negotiate with them, not because you want to go to a party, or do something like that, but because a family member is away and coming, and they will expect that. So the next thing that happens, well, not the next thing, but something else that happens, is, to me, one of the most interesting things of all. Do you remember that I told you about this area that people enter with love. , light and compassion? Well, this is exactly what we find.

Some people go in and out of what they call "another reality." What is reality like? Very similar to the one I have been describing to you. Except this time, there are spiritual beings, there are dead relatives, they all tell you they will help you cross over when you die. And here's the kind of thing, the kind of story we get: "My father was at his bedside, deeply distraught, but my grandfather said quietly to him, 'Don't worry, Leslie, I'm fine.' I can see here the most beautiful things and you should not worry.' And he died peacefully and lucid to the end." That's very useful, isn't it?

In fact, it is not this horrible darkness that you are all thinking about. It's really quite different from that. So this is an example of the alternate reality. They describe it as very beautiful, flowers everywhere, light and love. So let's now move on to death itself. And death is a totally fascinating moment. The things that happen are quite surprising. One of the things is that it shows our connection or our interconnectedness. And deathbed coincidences are one of the main features. In a deathbed match, the dying person, in our samples, within half an hour of their death, but mostly at the time of death, will go and contact someone they are emotionally connected to, someone who couldn't be with him when they were dying, or someone they know very well and want to say goodbye to.

Here's a story like that, and see if you like it: "My father told me that he woke up during the night and saw a column of light at the end of his bed. As he watches, the column of light opens and his son appears. He says that He is dead but he is fine. He says: 'Goodbye', he re-enters the light that then slowly fades. Very often you receive a message. The one I gave you is in a dream. When you wake up, you feel like something very important has happened. You have to go and call. Sometimes the person will give you a message when you are awake, but that is not that common.

So let's consider what is really happening. at the moment of death and why I say it's so interesting. The clocks stop. I don't know if you have the song "My grandfather's clock" in Germany, which stopped dead. never come back when the old man died. Well, the mechanical clocks stop, the clocks stop, showing the time of death. Do electronics stop? They Yes. We have stories of all of these. So there is some relationship between the watch and the person. Animals. If you have a close relationship with your animal and he is away, say at home, very often at the time of your death he will respond.

We had a lovely story. Here you can see Fluke, a black lab, and here you can see Derek; They had a very close relationship. Fluke died five years before Derek died, and in his

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days, Derek saw Fluke in the hospice room where he was dying. His wife wrote in her letter that she very much hoped that Fluke would be there to help Derek cross. Now, one of the most fascinating things to me is light, light at the moment of death. Now, you get a radiant light that shines from the person around you and can be seen shining outside the hospice room.

At the moment of death, the person can be transformed by thelight and you can see light in the room. If you get caught in the light, or re-enter it, it will have this spiritual quality of love and compassion. Here is a nice story that a hospice chaplain told me. "Sometimes I've seen a light in the corner, like the light of a candle. It's a golden light, it's not electric light. It's not one of the hospice lights. It's like the light of a candle, and it just It appears sometimes. It comes when they die. They take their last breath, when everything calms down, the light goes out." Then these things happen.

Now, what do we mean by having a "good death?" Having a good death means you really know what you want. This is why it is so important that everyone heard what I said. Do they really want this? Tied to pipes, tubes and cables. It is not a place where they can relax. Death process. They don't have time for you. They're keeping the living alive, so what are you doing there? So make sure that doesn't happen to you. But death at home or in a hospice is, in my opinion, a problem. Good death. It goes like this: when you receive spiritual care and where relatives can visit you, but much more importantly, where the grandchildren can visit you, they can even play in your bed if you are not too sick.

May you see that death is part of life. It is. To lead a good life is to have a good death. So what have I been saying? Simply put, prepare for a good death. Teach people, including children, not to be afraid of dying. Many of you will have children, many of the children will have hamsters, many of the hamsters will die. Use this as an opportunity to talk to them about death. Find out what can happen to you when you die. Prepare for death and not only clean out your attic, but also your relationships. And remember this, and that is that one of the most difficult things about death is the relationships within the family that are stressful.

It is a very stressful death. So don't do it, figure it out beforehand. Talk about death and don't sweep it under the rug. The final frontier may not be as scary as you think. So don't be afraid. Now, the important thing about this is that all of you, or some of you, will say, "Well, I'm not sure I really believe this man." Ask your friends. I'm going to do an experiment now with all of you. I want to know how many of you have encountered or had near-death experiences? I want to know how many of you, in fact, have had an experience with a family member who has had the type of things that I'm talking about, you know?

So anyone who has heard a story, of any of those dimensions, I want you to raise your hand. I'm told that sometimes the German public doesn't do it. Okay, raise your hands. Wow, look at that! And they say these things don't happen. Thank you all for doing that. Now, let me talk a little bit about the final frontier. I have chosen two stories. The great inventor Edison, a few hours before his death, came out of a coma, opened his eyes, looked up and said: "He is very beautiful there." OK? Just before dying. And this one, you all know it, but I want you to participate just to show that you understand it.

Steve Jobs, according to his sister, as he was dying, Steve Jobs looked into the middle distance and said in wonder, "Wow, wow!" Now, to show me that you understand what I've been saying, you have this message of hope. I want everyone to join me on the third "Wow." I'm going to count to three. One, two, three, wow. OK ready? One, two, three: (Audience): "Wow!" Peter Fenwick: Hey! (Applause)