Thanks, Bee. XXXX ((())) and well put.
Nice NDE story, too. My grandmother was in a coma as a young woman when grandfather rolled the car with my dad and uncle still little boys in the backseat, no seatbelts. In her coma she experienced coming down a high mountain and seeing her father-in-law, the only man who had ever been kind to her (her words) coming down teh facing mountain towards her. They met in the valley and she wanted to go with him to his mountain, but he wouldn't let her. He told her it wasn't time yet, that she had to go back. She was very upset but then came out of her coma.
She told this story in her Russian accent, turning from the waist because her neck didn't turn (kind of like an owl) since the accident. It was very real to her, but not being a theist, she thought of it as a very real dream. Yes, my great-grandfather was dead by then, but since she didn't believe in life after death, and although she experienced him as real during her coma, once she came to she didn't speak of it as meeting him in the afterlife, only of meeting him in her mind during her coma. Her story also has that wonderful wanting to stay feeling, and almost every element of your story. Just a different interpretation.
Ever done exstasy, MDA, MMDA, or any other good serotonin boost? You wouldn't want to come back either.
Of the two interpretations - dream versus life-after-death - which is more realistic, given the state of today's knowledge about the brain? I'm not saying it couldn't be a supernatural experience. I'm just saying it isn't as reasonable to go with that interpretation than to go with the more likely one. Now, what we need to do is stick these poor nearly-dying people in an actual tube - an fMRI tube - and see if their serotonin-producing neurons work overtime during such an episode... Not ethical without consent, so we'd need to add the possibility into, say, a DNR order... I don't know that I would actually volunteer for such a study myself, though!
And while the gold may be under the gore, that does not justify the inflicting of the wound in the first place. What gives another the right to mine gold in *my* person, even if the gold is for me? Sure, we can learn really good lessons from the damage inflicted by the institutionalization of faith - doesn't make said institutionalization a good thing. I'd rather not have the damage in the first place.