What A. J. Ayer Saw When He Was Dead
A. J. Ayer, a leading proponent of logical positivism, remained an atheist until
the end of his life. However, towards the end of his life, he admitted that his
conviction that his death would mean the end of him had been weakened by an experience
he had while "dead" for four minutes.
I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even
when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the
government of the universe. Among its ministers were two creatures who had been
put in charge of space. These ministers periodically inspected space and had recently
carried out such an inspection. They had, however, failed to do their work properly,
with the result that space, like a badly fitting jigsaw puzzle, was slightly out
of joint.
A further consequence was that the laws of nature had ceased to function as they
should. I felt that it was up to me to put things right. I also had the motive of
finding a way to extinguish the painful light. I assumed that it was signaling that
space was awry and that it would switch itself off when order was restored.
Unfortunately, I had no idea where the guardians of space had gone and feared that
even if I found them I should not be able to communicate with them. It then occurred
to me that whereas, until the present century, physicists accepted the Newtonian
severance of space and time, it had become customary, since the vindication of Einstein's
general theory of relativity, to treat space-time as a single whole. Accordingly,
I thought that I could cure space by operating upon time.
I was vaguely aware that the ministers who had been given charge of time were in
my neighborhood and I proceeded to hail them. I was again frustrated. Either they
did not hear me, or they chose to ignore me, or they did not understand me. I then
hit upon the expedient of walking up and down, waving my watch, in the hope of drawing
their attention not to my watch itself but to the time which it measured. This elicited
no response. I became more and more desperate, until the experience suddenly came
to an end.
Source: "What
I Saw When I Was Dead".