Copyright (c) 2007 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
YOU CAN experience the awe, power and mystery of the afterlife with “near-death goggles” that make death so amazingly real and appealing that you might not want to take them off – ever.
So says born-again Christian inventor Yoshimo Takara, the computer expert who introduced the goggles “on a whim” at a technology show in Hong Kong and is now swamped with orders that by his estimate will take four to six years to fulfill.
“I made the goggles for my children – I had no idea adults would stand in line to buy them,” Takara, 38, told me exclusively in a telephone interview from his apartment in Tokyo.
“But I have seen how people respond when they put them on. They are very happy.
“In some cases they grow angry and push you away when ask them to take off the goggles so someone else can try them.”
But he isn’t complaining. With a suggested retail of $3,500 a pair – about the price of a state-of-the-art home computer – Takara stands to become a millionaire many times over based on advance orders alone.
The inventor declines to discuss the technical aspects of “Virtual Afterlife,” as he calls the goggles. But they plainly rely on the “cyber reality” technologies that are in wide use in video games and at amusement parks such as Universal Studios and Disney World.
The difference is in the scope of the concept and the complexity of the software that drives the goggles.
While ordinary video games allow players to fight, play football, race cars and pilot starships, Takara’s goggles let users to speak with Jesus and his disciples, sit on God’s lap, walk on streets of gold and also saunter through landscapes of such exquisite serenity and unearthly perfection that some users already are being described clinically as “addicts.”
But there’s more. By purchasing additional software, users can use the goggles to chat with departed friends and loved ones.
There’s even a program that allows users to “try” suicide, a feature that Takara admits is apt to be far more popular in Japan, where suicide is considered honorable, than in the U.S., where it’s frowned upon and against the law.
Freelance writer Tammy Maron, 44, experienced the goggles in a 22-minute test run at the technology show in Hong Kong. She says the experience “was more than entertaining – it changed my life.”
“It started out like the near-death experiences people describe after they die on an operating table or in a car crash and are later revived,” she told me.
“At first I seemed to be sliding through a long, black corridor into a pinpoint of light. The light got bigger and bigger until I found myself immersed in it.
“As I looked around I could feel Christ his love and his light penetrating into my heart and soul. I was filled with love. I was consumed by love. It was everywhere and it seemed to ripple out in all directions into eternity.
“Then Christ took shape as a human and he looked just like those renditions you see in the Bible, the ones where he has the long blond hair and blue eyes. He took my hand and led me along a golden street into a great shimmering city of silver and white.
“He took me to the throne of God and all I can say is that it was real – absolutely real. “I now believe Yoshimo was inspired byGod to create these goggles just as Moses was inspired to write the 10 Commandments.
“When you get a chance to wear the goggles yourself, you’ll know what I mean.”
Takara makes no bones about the fact that he is a born-again Christian, but he stops short of saying the goggles were divinely inspired.
“If they were inspired I’m not aware of it,” he says. “But as we all know, God works in mysterious ways.”
Along those lines, perhaps, several firms have approached Takara about purchasing large numbers of the goggles to lease to hospitals and nursing homes to help terminally ill patients experience a preview of the afterlife and overcome their fear of dying.
The inventor expects to sell millions of the units in America once production is in full swing.
“We’d like to get some on the shelves in time for Christmas,” he said.
