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US man was struck by lightning and declared dead, but then he woke up in a morgue. Here's what he thinks about afterlife
Dannion Brinkley, 74, a US Marine and businessman, has opened up about multiple near-death experiences that he has had.
A US Marine and businessman has opened up about multiple near-death experiences that he has had. In 1975, Dannion Brinkley, 74, was struck by lightning.
“It went into the side of my head above my ear, it went down my spine,” Brinkley told KLAS. “…It threw me up in the air, I see the ceiling, it slams me back down, a ball of fire comes through the room and blinds me. I am burning. I am on fire. I am paralyzed.”
Brinkley was taken in an ambulance and soon declared dead by doctors. However, he woke up nearly 30 minutes later in a hospital morgue after his soul temporarily left his body, the outlet reported. Explaining what happened to him when he flatlined, Brinkley said there was a light and a flashback of his entire life.
Brinkley learned to walk again as many as two years after the incident. However, his experience with death had not ended there.
Dannion Brinkley’s second near-death experience
Brinkley faced death 10 years later again while undergoing an open heart surgery. Talking about his second encounter, he wrote on the back of his first book, titled Saved by the Light, that he was “reunited with his angelic instructors” and learned how to “use his new psychic and spiritual gifts to aid the dying and the desperate.”
Brinkley, however, has his skeptics and debunkers. But there may be some truth to his experiences, an expert believes. Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health, told the New York Post, “There are signs of normal and near normal brain activity found up to an hour into resuscitation.”
Parnia added, referencing an NYU Grossman School of Medicine report, “We were not only able to show the markers of lucid consciousness — we were also able to show that these experiences are unique and universal. They’re different from dreams, illusions and delusions.”
Brinkley, who got several chances at life, is now telling his story to inspire others. “So, when you learn you don’t die, when you learn you’re a spiritual being, you’re not going to go to hell. That’s enough to inspire you to change,” he said.
Brinkley now counsels terminally ill patients and his fellow veterans, and encourages not to fear death. Sharing his thoughts about the afterlife, he said, “Nobody dies. It never happens. It’s not a part of the nature of reality, it’s not.”
