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I never expected to spend so much time looking into near-death experiences.
我从未想过会花这么多时间研究濒死体验。
I thought at first it was just a strange anomaly.
起初我以为这只是一个奇怪的反常现象。
I'd spend a few years looking at them, find the physiological explanation, and put it behind me.
我可能会花几年时间观察它们，找到生理上的解释，然后这事儿就过去了。
I collected about a thousand cases that people had sent to me about their own near-death experience.
我收集了大约一千个人们寄给我的关于他们自己濒死经历的案例。
Quickly realized that the stories I was getting from people who volunteered their stories to me were the same as the ones from people I interviewed in the hospital.
我很快就意识到，我收到的人们自愿向我讲述的那些故事跟我在医院采访的人的故事是一样的。
We studied the physiological events around the near-death experience, psychological traits with the experiencers and so forth; trying to find some logical explanation for these events.
我们研究了濒死体验相关的生理事件、体验者的心理特征等，想为这些事找到一些合理的解释。
Most of us are taught that the mind is what the brain does.
我们大多数人都被教导，思想就是大脑所做的事。
That all our thoughts, our feelings, our perceptions, our memories are all created by the brain.
我们所有的想法，我们的感觉，感知，记忆都是由大脑创造的。
However, that's not the whole story.
然而，这并不是全部。
And we have hundreds and hundreds of experiences that occur during a cardiac arrest or deep anesthesia, when we know the brain is not capable of functioning well enough to create complex thoughts and feelings and memories.
在心脏骤停或深度麻醉时，我们有成百上千种经历，我们知道那时候大脑并不具备创造复杂的想法、感觉和记忆的能力。
Most near-death experiencers say that in the near death experience, their senses were incredibly heightened, and they often report hearing sounds they'd never heard on Earth, and seeing colors they'd never seen before.
大多数濒死体验者说，在濒死体验中，他们的感官得到了极度增强，他们经常会说自己听到了在地球上从未听到过的声音，看到了他们以前从未见过的颜色。
One person said to me, "It's like trying to draw an odor with a crayon."
有个人跟我说：“感觉就像用蜡笔去画气味一样。”
And when they come back, they don't know how to describe these things because there aren't words for them to describe them, but they talk about their senses being so much more vivid in the NDE.
复活后，他们不知道该如何描述这些事情，因为找不到合适的词，但他们都说在濒死体验中，感官非常鲜活。
And that gives the experience a sense of being more real than real.
这给人一种比真实还要真实的感觉。
More real than this world is.
比这个世界还要真实。
Most near-death experiences are pretty much the same around the world and through the centuries.
从古到今，世界各地的濒死体验几乎都是如出一辙。
Plenty of the elder wrote about a case like this in Ancient Rome.
在古罗马，许多长老都写到了类似的案例。
In the first century, we've gotten examples of near-death experiences from Western Europe from the Middle East, from Asian cultures, Hindu, Buddhist cultures, and from primitive cultures- Australian Aborigines and Native American societies, that sound just like the stories we have today.
在一世纪，我们从西欧、中东、亚洲文化、印度教、佛教文化、从原始文化--澳大利亚原住民和美洲原住民社会--找到了濒死体验的例子，听起来跟我们今天的差不多。
However, how they describe these phenomenon is influenced by their cultural background.
然而，他们对这些现象的描述受到了文化背景的影响。
For example, people all around the world will talk about encountering a warm, loving being of light that radiates unconditional love towards them.
例如，全世界的人都提到，他们会遇到一束温暖、有爱的光芒，向他们散发出无条件的爱。
And if you're talking to someone who is raised in the United States, they may identify this as God or sometimes Jesus, whereas someone who is in a Hindu or Buddhist culture will not use those terms.
如果你的交谈对象是美国人，他们可能会认为这是上帝，或者耶稣，但信奉印度教或佛教文化的人不会使用这种说法。
Some of the lessons that near-death experiencers bring back from this event relate to what they find makes life meaningful and fulfilling for them.
濒死体验者从中学到的东西与他们对生活中那些有意义和有成就感的东西有关。
And the primary thing they talk about, is this sense of being interconnected with other people- about how to make this life more meaningful, more purposeful, more fulfilling.
他们主要谈论的是与他人之间的关系，如何让人生更有意义、更有目的、更有成就感。
I think a reason, many people find near-death experiences interesting is because they hold out the promise that will explain to us what the soul is, whether there is an afterlife, after our body is decomposed.
我认为，许多人觉得濒死体验有趣，是因为它们提供了一种希望，会在我们的身体分解后告诉我们什么是灵魂，是否有来世。
And I think those are good questions, I don't think that's the most important part of the near-death experience.
这些都是很好的问题，但我认为这不是濒死体验中最重要的部分。
I think they do tell us something about the possibility of surviving bodily death.
他们确实告诉了我们一些关于肉体死亡后存活的可能性。
But I think the important part of near-death experiences is what they tell us about this life we're in now.
但我认为濒死体验最重要的是，它们能告诉我们关于现世生活的何种信息。
