'I died for seven minutes and after what I saw I'm no longer scared of death'

A man who claims to have been clinically dead for seven minutes took to Reddit to share his near-death experience, revealing visions of elliptical shapes instead of the famous white light

A man claiming to have been clinically dead for seven minutes has offered a starkly different account of what occurs during death, arguing that the renowned " white light " is simply the brain crafting a comforting narrative for itself.

The man, who identified himself as a PhD scholar with over four decades of experience in astrophysics, posted on the social platform Reddit that he was taken to hospital after experiencing sudden breathing difficulties, with medical staff diagnosing a lung hemorrhage upon his arrival.

Once admitted, his health rapidly declined, resulting in a severe cardiac arrest that left him without a detectable pulse.

"It took the doctors seven minutes to get my heart started again," he posted on Reddit. "During that time, I had a stroke due to the lack of oxygen in my brain."

"I asked, 'What happened?'" he recalled. "It's hard to correlate inner time to what was happening outside, but I can make some sense of it."

Remarkably, despite the ordeal, the incident left him completely unafraid of his mortality.

"I'm not scared of dying, not in the least," he posted. "Afraid of what comes before, sure, but nature makes dying easy."

Throughout the seven minutes his heart remained still, he noted that he didn't witness a tunnel, celestial beings or anything of that nature. What he encountered was considerably more intangible.

"I saw a series of three oval ellipses, one at a time, just suspended in a black space," he said.

Each shape appeared separately, he claimed, with the first was filled with landscapes.

"On the inner and outer surfaces of the first ellipse I saw mountains, streams, forests and clouds," he wrote. "They were beautiful at first, but then they began to sour as their colours took on a yellow tinge."

That vision disappeared and was succeeded by something considerably more disturbing the-mirror-icon_news_weird-news_health.

"It was a hot ring of iron, so hot that pieces of iron were slowly crumbling from it," he said.

He also recalls experiencing an unusual metallic odor, which he subsequently recognized might have been linked to blood and trauma as his body began failing.

The last vision emerged precisely when his heart was revived.

"The scene brightened to reveal the third ellipse that was covered with beautiful clouds that were light pink and blue, like the most beautiful sunrise or sunset," he wrote. "That, I believe, is when my heart started beating again."

What's fascinating is that his interpretation wasn't rooted in the supernatural or unexplained, but rather that the forms he witnessed were shaped by what his mind had been concentrating on moments before his collapse.

At that moment, he had reportedly been examining the research of German astronomer Johannes Kepler and was intensely focused on comprehending why planetary orbits are elliptical rather than circular. "When I was told days later about my cardiac arrest and stroke, it all began to make sense," he shared.

"I think dying reflects what happens to be most accessible in your mind during that time. Your mind tells you a story about it."

He was explicit about what he didn't encounter.

"That's all I saw," he penned. "No tunnel of light or happy deceased family members welcoming me. I think that's dreaming."

Throughout the entire episode, he claimed he never experienced fear.

"I was just a dispassionate observer," he elucidated.