The Revealing Death of Sam KinisonIt was about 8:30 P.M. Friday night on April 10, 1992, when comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a head on collision with a pickup truck. Kinison had just been married a week before and was travelling from Los Angeles with his newlywed wife, Malika, to a sold out performance in Laughlin, Nevada.
Kinison was completely sober, and drug free at that point in his life, but the teenagers barreling down the wrong side of the highway that night were smashed out of their minds.
Sam had seen the truck coming, and slowed his Trans Am down to just 15 miles per hour, but he wasn't wearing his seat belt. At impact he was thrown into the windshield, and suffered multiple traumatic injuries.
In the first moments after impact Kinison seemed as if he were going to make it, but within minutes he appeared to know he was about to die.
Witnesses stated that Kinison appeared to be holding a conversation in which he stated,
"I don't want to die. I don't want to die."As the conversation continued Sam said,
"But why?"And finally, Kinison stated,
"Okay, Okay, Okay".
The last "Okay" was stated in a very gentle and loving manner, as if he were talking with someone he knew, and loved.
Efforts to resuscitate him failed. He was just 38 years old.
The Question Is - Are We Ever Truly Alone?To whom, or what was Sam Kinison conversing with while he died?
Religious Answers Arrive Quickly - But At What Cost?For those with traditional religious beliefs the answer might come easy for a religious person could offer the explanation that Sam Kinison was speaking to God, perhaps an angel, or even the Devil, or a demon.
The problem with religious explanations is that they offer an explanation without any means to test those explanations for validity. Such answers beg for more proof, and there never has been any when it comes to claims for the existence of a God, or afterlife. Religion itself all but eliminates the intellectual discourse and the rational quest for verifiable truth about the nature of reality, and human experience. For that reason I must dismiss any religious explanations, despite how warm, and wondrous it makes me feel about life, and death. While I do not reject God, I must not accept another human being's authoritarian religious explanation for anything for it would spell my doom as a creature desirous of rationality, and intellectual integrity. If there is a God I don't see that God as scornful of the scientific method as most fundamentalist believe God must be.
For those less inclined to ascribe, or accept, religious explanations an answer comes with less certainty, so I'll offer several, and in the end I must admit that these explanations are only possibilities with an undetermined level of assigned probability.
Explanation - A Near Death Hallucination?Victims of brain trauma may be especially vulnerable to neurotransmitter level imbalances, and it would be easy to point to hallucination as the explanation for Mr. Kinison's final conversation. We all hold an inner dialog, even without being aware of that dialog at times. Under extremely stressful situations the conscious mind could rely upon a disassociated stated to filter out perceptions which would cause shock. In fact such a mechanism if it exist could very well be the result of brain design, and evolutionary selection. Those animals capable of maintaining a level of function while in extreme distress, and injury may have one last chance to survive. An elk which continues to kick while within the clutches of a predator may get lucky, and land a severe enough blow to the predator so as to escape what would seem to be an impossible situation. Therefore a flood of speed like neurotransmitters, and pain killing opiates perhaps paired with a hallucination of running might be designed within the very circuitry of the animal brain.
Kinison's "Hallucination" Would Have Been dysfunctionalIf Mr. Kinison was only experiencing a hallucination, which allowed him to handle the extreme situation which he found himself in, then why did it take the form of a conversation in which Mr. Kinison was being informed that he was going to die? Such a conversation hallucination would seem only to add to Mr. Kinison's stress at precisely the moment he would need to be calmed. Why didn't the hallucination tell Mr. Kinison that he was going to live? If near death experiences are only hallucinations meant to help people get through a stressful situation it appears to have taken a rather odd form in the case of Mr. Kinison.
Occam's Razor - Are The Simplest Solutions Always The Best?Despite any preference for a keep it simple Occam's Razor approach, which modern science purports is the best, I suspect that our culture's limited understanding of the workings of the human brain will one day show that the simplest approach isn't always the best when it comes to understanding human mind.
While I will always refrain from endorsing a religious approach to understanding human experience I do believe it is possible that a "religious" explanation has certain advantages under certain circumstances, and this might be one. There may be some wisdom intertwined within religious beliefs which can be dissected scientifically, and which may yield some possible explanations which are more holistic, more quantum in nature than a reductionist approach based upon our current and rather primitive understanding of the human mind.
Explanation - Interface With A Second Sentient EntityWas it just a part of himself, or was Sam interacting with an another sentient entity?
If Mr. Kinison was conversing with another sentient entity what type of entity could interact with a dying man, seemingly from within his own mind?
MultiVerse Trans Dimensional Consciousness SymbiosisIf the electro chemical computer which underpins human consciousness were in some way connected to another sentience outside the confines of the human body this might explain the death accompanying experience. Some Multiverse theories (i.e., other world theories) state that every possible time line which is possible will exist, and that each time line is yoked to the other through entanglement.
Transdimensional entanglement would have allowed the brain to evolve into a electro chemical quantum computer, capable of "feeling out" every possible result of any calculation at incredible speeds, but due to causality restrictions only the subconscious mind is able to interface directly with the multitude of dimensions. The conscious mind is provided with only a fraction of the final product of any such calculation since the conscious mind is capable of collapsing wave forms.
In alternate timelines Sam Kinison is still alive because he wore his seat belt. Thus it is possible that Sam Kinison as he approached his death in this time line was speaking to his own subconscious in another time line through the process of entanglement. The restriction on passing "information" only applies in cases in which "information" would create a paradox. In dream states, or altered states such as the near death, and death accompanying experience the conscious mind takes a back seat to the subconscious mind. The subconscious watches, but mostly in a passive sense, and therefore can not disturb a timeline through a transtemporal paradox.
The WatchersAnother possibility is that an entity possibly non-biological based upon advanced technology has developed the ability to record human thought from a distance. Possibly opening nano scale wormholes at will in far flung regions of space time. Current theory argues that such a technology may be possible. If it is possible at all and any form of sentient life managed to survive long enough then it is probable that such a connection exist without human detection.
Such a civilization would be able to automate the process of opening nano scale wormholes by yoking particle accelerators to artificially intelligent quantum computers. Entangled particles could be injected through the nano scale wormholes and act as transdimensional sensors. Transdimensional interferometers would be capable of sensing weak electromagnetic fields generated by the brain across vast oceans of space and time.
The same technology could be used to network with other quantum computers in a subspace field - that is to connect to a human mind through a technological form of telepathy. It may be possible to record thoughts, spark memory recalls and record them, and recreate them in the same way the human brain does - download human experience into an remote artificial intelligence matrix - creating an afterlife at the point of death of a human being.
This could account for the thousands of stories which are referred to as near death experiences.
Wrap UpJust what or whom was Sam Kinison speaking to while he was dying we may never know for sure, or more likely we already know, but the possibilities are much greater than just a hallucination, or even angels. The most important aspect of this event as I see it is that each of us "knows" our own fate. It is how we choose to use that information either consciously, or subconsciously that defines our life.
To all those offended that I chose not to review a religious explanation - ask yourself what then would there have been to review? If magic is involved we have no way of understanding any aspect of an event since magic and religion excludes the possibility of human understanding of the underlying process.
Note also, that for all I know Sam Kinison may be in heaven right now, but whether he is or not I would still be asking how it is that such a heaven could exist, and how it is that a God could accomplish the preservation of individual "souls".