Known for her roles in the 90s films Basic Instinct and Casino, the Hollywood star Sharon Stone experienced a brain hemorrhage and stroke in 2001. Now, twenty years later, the actress has decided to share her memories of this difficult period in her book The Beauty of Living Twice.
While in the hospital, Stone recalls noticing everything moving strangely – as if the footage of her life was rushing back through the camera. She then experienced the sensation of falling into a huge, luminous whiteout, where she saw three friends who had passed away. They were warm and happy, unlike the cold hospital room. But the next moment, she felt a kick in the center of her chest – and woke up with a gasp as if she had been under water for a long time.
Another episode Sharon recounts, as reported in the NZ Herald, was seeing her grandmother standing at the head of her bed. “That sounds reasonable, except my grandmother had been dead for 30 years,” Sharon explains. Her guest was dressed in her favorite suit and hat, smelled of familiar perfume, and looked beautiful. Before leaving, she advised her granddaughter not to move her neck, and Sharon obeyed, putting a teddy bear under her neck.
According to Michael Raduga, such situations can indicate that you are in a phase state (a term combining lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences). With the help of several dozen volunteers, studies artificially reproducing near-death experiences in REM sleep have been conducted. Twenty participants were able to experience flight through a tunnel toward a light, where deceased relatives, angels, or God – i.e. the most widespread images from clinical death reports – were awaiting them. Near-death and out-of-body experiences have two common features: self-awareness and out-of-body perception. The only difference is the cause of this state and the details of the scenario. When people realize that they are close to death, they begin to expect to leave the body by flying through a tunnel simply because they have heard so many stories describing similar experiences.
Sharon Stone’s book is available on Amazon.