If I die suddenly — in a crash or in my sleep — will I understand what happened?

“So when I wake up, my spiritual eyes open, there was this instantaneous knowing that I had died. I woke up and I instantly said to myself, oh no, I'm dead.”4:03

“I didn't know anything about death at the age of six, but at that moment, I knew. Everything stopped. My life stopped. Everything was quiet and calm. Nothing mattered to me anymore. I knew I was dead. Afterwards, I saw a glimpse of light, and I was out of my body. When I saw my body, I became very upset. I knew it was my body. I did not want to die.”1:52

“All of a sudden, and this all happened within like two seconds, I realized I was dead.”7:47

“I'm dead. And I turned around and I looked back into bed, I'm still in the bed, my body is, but this thing had a hold of me and now it's taking it. Insta- that happens is when I die, I instantly knew everything. It's kind of hard to explain, but my, your spirit knows so much more than your body does.”5:31

“But I did not feel anything more of that. Instead, I immediately sank into unconsciousness during the collision. And when I woke up, I found myself on a kind of strangely high level of consciousness. A feeling of dying was permeating me. It was inconceivable for me that I should die.”1:34

“It felt like a transition, and I actually figured, to be honest with you, straight away that I was dead, and I didn't fight it. I didn't try to resist it. It's not like I wanted to die, but after all the way my life had been and the whole horror of the accident, it just kind of I just kind of went with it because I felt safe instantly as well.”3:32

“You know, it wasn't like all of a sudden I had it all along. I can tell you, I was afraid of suffocating. I was afraid of it. But when the moment came on me to suffocate, all of a sudden, I had peace, joy, comfort, and I left my body and my body died.”9:21

“And after that thought, that was the only thought that I had, and it was almost like confirmation that I had, I was close in my life and trying to figure out what death was like, and so it was like, 'Ah,' like I wasn't too far off.”20:47

“I'm falling asleep, but now I was dying. And in the blink of an eye, literally, I'm above my body looking down at me and the room and the contents of the room and everything. And I'm what the hell, you know, how could I be here and how could I be there? And I'm I remember going down I'm looking at my chest and I'm and there's no movement. There's no breathing and my body was very very limp. I was like, "What? Am I dead?" And before I could even process the thought, "Well, am I dead really?" There is this magnificent white light”83:16

“Although I never found out exactly what happened to me medically at the time I went unconscious or perceived that experience as a clinical death, I had no doubts that I had glimpsed the experience of death in some form.”18:37

“I wouldn't necessarily be aware the moment that I died, but it was more like the physicality of it, the pain. It just stopped. And there was like a silence.”10:17

“The first thing I asked myself when I realized that I was dead was, “What should I do?” I was no longer afraid. There was absolute silence.”7:26

“So it felt good, until I realized that I was dying, and it was like my breath was slowing down. I felt like I was falling into a hole. Then the next thing I know, I'm standing beside myself and I'm looking at my dead body on the couch. And oddly enough, like it didn't seem strange to me. Like I knew that I had died and I was looking at my body, but it wasn't odd, it wasn't strange.”5:31

“incredible peace. I had no more pain. I had accepted death. I believe the only way a person can die is to accept it." Suddenly, I was yanked back to my body and came to gray as a guy I had seen who was dead from a heart attack. I knew it had happened. I knew it was real. They denied anything that happened at the time, but I got to know the male nurse on purpose to get him to discuss it with me. I asked him later how long I was gone, and he said about 3 minutes. I said, "I did leave, didn't I?" He”3:16

“I knew I was dead but then it was so automatic to how alive I felt that was like really shocking for me.”1:50

“I died. Death. Let me make this perfectly plain: I killed myself. I died. I did not almost die. I did not only think I died. Part of me that animates my body was detached from it. There was no power to make that body function. We call that dead. I know I was dead. There was a feeling, an awareness of something like a tiny click, a pull like a cork, a release like the tension taken off a spring as I died.”5:47