Usually when I mention suspended animation, people will flash me the Vulcan sign and laugh.
Occasionally, human beings are briefly de-animated, and the stories of people who are briefly de-animated that interest me the most are those having to do with the cold.
What do I mean when I say ‘suspended animation’? It is the process by which animals de-animate, appear dead and then can wake up again without being harmed. OK, so here is the sort of big idea: If you look out at nature, you find that as you tend to see suspended animation, you tend to see immortality.
For a very long time, we’ve been extraordinarily interested in the interaction between low temperature and low oxygen. We see that they’re connected because we know people who are extremely cold are not getting oxygen to their cells. And yet, they’re sometimes alive.
In the immortal germ line of human beings – that is, the eggs that sit in the ovaries – they actually sit there in a state of suspended animation for up to 50 years in the life of each woman.
If you look in the animal world, many, many organisms will enter into states of suspended animation.
What might be happening in human beings who experience near death is that they are getting cold, but before they get so cold that they would die, they’re actually diminishing their oxygen consumption in a way that is unknown. And that extends their survival limits, so they can appear dead but actually not be dead.