Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Life
& Death:
The
Physician Who Watched Himself Die
- metgat's blog, July 17, 2007
In his 1903 book, Human
Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (published two years after his 1901
death), Frederic W. H. Myers, the pioneering psychical researcher, set forth a story about
what is now known as a near-death experience, which took place in 1889. It was told
to him by Dr. A. S. Wiltse, a physician of Skiddy, Kansas, known to both Myers and fellow
researcher, Dr. Richard Hodsgon, as a “careful and conscientious witness.”
Wiltse was suffering from typhoid
fever. “I passed about four hours in all without pulse or perceptible heartbeat,
as I am informed by Dr. S. H. Raynes, who was the only physician present,” Wiltse
related in a letter to Myers. “During a portion of this time several of the
bystanders thought I was dead, and such a report being carried outside, the village church
bell was tolled. Dr. Raynes informs me, however, that by bringing his eyes close to
my face, he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so very light as to be barely
perceptible, and that he was upon the point, several times of saying, ‘He is dead,”
when a gasp would occur in time to check him.”
Raynes pricked Wiltse with a needle
at various points on his body but got no response. It was later estimated that while
Wiltse was without pulse for about four hours, his state of “apparent death”
lasted only about half-an-hour. “I lost, I believe, all power of thought or
knowledge of existence in absolute unconsciousness,” Wiltse continued the story.
“I came again into a state of conscious existence and discovered that I was
still in the body, but the body and I had no longer any interest in common. I looked
in astonishment and joy for the first time upon myself - the me, the real Ego, while the
not-me closed it upon all side like a sepulcher of clay.
“With all the interest of
a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily anatomy, intimately interwoven with which,
even tissue for tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body. I learned that the
epidermis was the outside boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, of the soul.
I realized my condition and reasoned calmly thus. I have died, as men term
death, and yet I am as much a man as ever. I am about to get out of the body.
I watched the interesting process of the separation of soul and body. By some
power, apparently not my own, the Ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, as a cradle is
rocked, by which process its connection with the tissues of the body was broken up.
After a little time the lateral motion ceased, and long the soles of the feet
beginning at the toes, passing rapidly to the heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the
snapping of innumerable small cords. When this was accomplished, I began slowly to retreat
from the feet, toward the head, as a rubber cord shortens. I remember reaching the
hips and saying to myself, ‘Now, there is no life below the hips.'”
Dr. Wiltse could not recall passing
through the abdomen or chest, but he recollected that his “whole self” was
collected into his head. He appeared to himself something like a jelly-fish in color
and form and remembered thinking that he would soon be free. As “he” emerged
from his head, he saw two women sitting at the head of his physical shell and wondered if
there was room for him to stand.
“As I emerged from the
head, I floated up and down and laterally like a soap bubble attached to the bowl of a
pipe until I at last broke loose from the body and fell lightly to the floor, where I
slowly arose and expanded into the full stature of a man. I seemed to be translucent, of a
bluish cast and perfectly naked. With a painful sense of embarrassment, I fled
toward the partially opened door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom I was facing,
as well as others who I knew were about me, but upon reaching the door I found myself
clothed, and satisfied upon that point, I turned and faced the company.”
To Wilste's surprise, the arm of one
man standing near the door passed through his arm without resistance. The man gave
no sign of the contact or of seeing Wilste as he continued to gaze toward the couch.
“I directed my gaze in the direction of his and saw my own dead body.”
Wiltse recalled being surprised at
how pale the body looked but congratulated himself on the way he had composed his body,
his hands clasped at his chest. He saw the two women weeping, but, at the time, did not
recognize them as his wife and sister, as he had no conception of individuality. He
then attempted to gain the attention of the people gathered in the room, but he was
unsuccessful.
“It did not once occur to me to
speak, and I concluded the matter by saying to myself; ‘They see only with the eyes
of the body. They cannot see spirits. They are watching what they think is I,
but they are mistaken. That is not I. This is I and I am as much alive as
ever.”
Since no one was paying any attention
to the real “him,” Wilste wandered outside. “I never saw the street more
distinctly than I saw it then,” he continued. “I took note of the redness
of the soil and of the washes the rain had made. I took a rather pathetic look about
me, like one who is about to leave his home for a long time. Then I discovered that
I had become larger than I was in earth life and congratulated myself thereupon. I
was somewhat smaller in the body than I just liked to be, but in the next life, I thought,
I am to be as I desired.”
Wiltse marveled at how well he was
feeling, when only minutes before he was in extreme distress. He then looked back
through the open door, where he could see his body. “I discovered then a small
cord, like a spider's web, running from my shoulders (of the spirit body) back to my body
and attaching to it at the base of my neck in front.” (referred to in the Bible as
the silver cord)
He soon became aware of a “presence,”
which he could not see, but which he knew was entering into an overhead cloud form the
southern side. “The presence did not seem, to my mind, as a form, because it
filled the cloud like some vast intelligence… Then from the right side and from the
left of the cloud a tongue of black vapor shot forth and rested lightly upon either side
of my head, and as they touched me thoughts not my own entered into my brain. “These,
I said, are his thoughts and not mine; they might be in Greek or Hebrew for all power I
have over them. But how kindly am I addressed in my mother tongue that so I may
understand all his will. Yet, although the language was English, it was so eminently above
my power to reproduce that my rendition of it is far short of the original. The following
is as near as I can render it:
This is the road to the eternal
world. Yonder rocks are the boundary between the two worlds and the two lives.
Once you pass them, you can no more return into the body. If your work is
complete on earth, you may pass beyond the rocks. If, however, upon consideration
you conclude that…it is not done, you can return into the body.
Wiltse approached the rocks.
“I was tempted to cross the boundary line. I hesitated and reasoned
thus: ‘I have died once and if I go back, soon or late, I must die again. If I
stay someone else will do my work, and so the end will be as well and as surely
accomplished, and shall I die again? I will not, but now that I am so near I will
cross the line and stay.”
But as he attempted to cross the
line, a black cloud appeared in front of him. “I knew that I was to be stopped.
I felt the power to move or to think leaving me. My hands fell powerless at
my side, my head dropped forward, the cloud touched my face and I knew no more.”
In “astonishment and disappointment,” Wiltse then found himself
back in his physical body. “What in the world has happened to me? he exclaimed.
“Must I die again?”
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