Quite commonly, bystanders at the death of someone else emphatically report co-living the dying experience of that other person. I first heard such a shared death experience from one of my professors of medicine, who was also a practicing physician, in December 1972.
This doctor had the unfortunate duty of trying to resuscitate her own mother, who died despite the resuscitation effort. She told me that when she felt her mother die, she found herself floating out of her body and viewing the scene from above. She saw her own physical body and the now-deceased body of her mother down below. She said, “As I was trying to get my bearings,” (her exact words) she became aware of her mother, “now in spirit form” (again, her exact words) alongside her.
She said her goodbyes to her mother, who receded into an intensely brilliant, white light. The physician saw figures emerging from the light as though to greet the spirit of her dying mother. The physician recognized some of the figures as deceased relatives and friends of her mother’s. However, she did not recognize the others and assumed that they were loved ones of her mother who had died before she herself had been born.
My professor saw the spirit of her mother reunited with the figures, whereupon they appeared to be drawn back into the light. Then the light was gone. The way the light vanished reminded her of the way in which the lens of a camera closes in a spiral. She found herself back in her own physical body, standing beside the deceased body of her mother.
