Science looks at episodes of near-death on ‘Died’

“Suddenly, I was floating above my body, and I could look down on myself and everyone in the room.”

“There was a tunnel, and I was going through it toward this spot of light.”

“It was a tremendous feeling of peace, of being at one with the universe.”

The lexicon of near-death experiences is as familiar as an episode of “I Love Lucy,” but what does it all really mean? Are the people who offer these vivid descriptions of what it’s like to cheat death the walking, talking proof of an afterlife? Or is this just a case of the imagination going up as the oxygen supply goes down?

Tonight at 10, the documentary “The Day I Died” on the Learning Channel attempts to shift the issue from anecdotal curiosity into scientific discovery, but despite the testimonials of a procession of near-death survivors, doctors and psychologists, I’m not sure we’re any closer to an answer.

The most intriguing profile involves a woman who was admitted to a hospital to have a dangerous aneurysm removed from the base of her brain. In order to perform the procedure, doctors had to lower her body temperature and shut down her heart and all measurable brain-wave activity. She was, in effect, dead. But after the operation, she told doctors of hearing the unpleasant buzzing of the bone saw that was used to open her skull, talked of seeing the device in the surgeon’s hand, and said she heard the doctors discussing complications which arose during the operation. The medical staff was flabbergasted.

A highly technical explanation of how cell memory might outlast the cell itself (at one point invoking Einstein’s theory of relativity) points to a new direction for researchers in near-death experiences, but I don’t think that version of life-after-death is what the tunnel-travelers had in mind.