British actor dies for seven minutes: What he says he saw

A British man has spoken out on his near-death experience, revealing what he saw when he says he crossed over to the other side after a cardiac arrest.

Actor Shiv Grewal, 60, had his brush with death a decade ago at his home in southeast London.

Despite his wife’s frantic calls to emergency services, his heart stopped and Grewal says he was transported to the stars.

“I felt things completely separate from my body,” Grewal told PA Real Life of the seven minutes before he was revived.

“It was like I was in a void but could feel emotions and sensations.”

He said it felt like he was swimming through water, “weightless and disconnected from the physical world”.

The man says his experience of death saw him transported to the stars. Photo / 123RF

Grewal described a cosmic experience that saw him shoot over the moon, seeing meteorites and “all of space”.

It was then that he says he was offered a glimpse of what might come next.

Grewal says he felt like “there was a whole set of possibilities, various lives, and reincarnations that were being offered to me”.

But it wasn’t his time.

“I made it very clear that I wanted to return to my body, to my time, to my wife, and to go on living”.

Paramedics arrived at the scene and were able to restart his heart and Grewal was then rushed into surgery to place a stent into his clogged main artery.

The experience changed Grewal, who is still recovering from the effects, and he now tries to communicate it through works of art.

The self-avowed “natural cynic” said what happened that day made him believe that was something after death and also helped him to appreciate what he had on earth.

“I’ve always thought that kindness is essential for humans to evolve and become better, but after this experience, I now feel this very deep inside me — like a fundamental truth,” he said.

Meanwhile, neuroscientific research suggests that a Near Death Experience (NDE) is a phenomenon resulting from “disturbed bodily multisensory integration” that occurs during a life-threatening event.

While people report feeling a range of experiences, some positive and some negative, general features of NDEs are said to include visions of deceased relatives and religious figures, and out-of-body experiences.

Medics at the University of Virginia say people might also experience a sensation of leaving the body, with some being able to see their physical body while floating above it.

Others may experience their mind functioning more clearly and rapidly than usual.