A Scientist who had a near death experience

Joyce Hawkes, a cell biologist with a PhD, had an accident that forever changed her life — and her view of science. She suffered a concussion from a falling window. "I think that part of me — that my spirit, my soul — left my body and went to another reality," she said. She was surprised at the experience.

"It just was not part of the paradigm in which I lived as a scientist," Hawkes recalled. "it was a big surprise to me to have this sense of something different than the body — a consciousness different than the body — and to be in this wonderfully healing, peaceful, nurturing place."

"I think what I learned was that there truly is no death, that there is a change in state from a physical form to a spirit form, and that there's nothing to fear about that passage," she said.