In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

by Sebastian Junger

Koch almost died and remembers an ecstatic experience with a brilliant light. “I lost everything. I lost my body, the world, my ego. There was no more Christof, there was just bright light, ecstasy. And it stays with you. Every day, I think about it. You lose borders between yourself and others. Right now, in normal conditions, I know this pen is not part of my body; I’ve learned there are borders between me and the rest of the world. So even if you make love to your wife and your bodies are intertwined, you still know, This is my leg and this is her leg. But under special circumstances, you can lose these borders and feel you are part of everything. Some people argue that this is evidence of universal consciousness. It’s quite possible. I think it’s unlikely, but I cannot rule it out on logical grounds.”