The Science of Near-Death Experiences
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For thousands of years, at least, people all over the world have reported deeply impactful, visionary experiences while just on the verge of death, or just after. Traditional religions have interpreted these experiences as evidence of a spiritual essence beyond the physical body. Though western science has long rejected the idea of an immaterial self, modern research into near-death experiences, or NDEs, has now proven that many occur after the point of bodily death, and thus cannot be produced in the brain. Whether they are evidence of the soul, or some other undiscovered phenomenon, NDEs have put Western materialist scientists on the defensive, and led many researchers to embrace bold new theories of consciousness.
History of NDEs
There are at least two accounts of what we’d now call near-death experiences recorded by the ancient Greeks. The first is The Myth of Er as recounted in Plato’s Republic, written around 360 B.C.E. It tells the story of a soldier named Er who was killed in battle and then came back to life. Er left his body and traveled with many others to a “mysterious place” with two gaping chasms in the earth mirrored by two gaping chasms in the sky. Several judges sat between the chasms, motioning people either upwards to the sky, or downwards into the earth.(1)
The second NDE-like account comes from Plutarch’s Divine Vengeance, written in the late first century, C.E.. Plutarch tells of a man from Soli, Cilicia who struck his head and died, only to return to life at his own funeral. In the intervening period, the man described feeling that “his intelligence was driven from his body,” and said that he could see from all sides, as if his soul had “opened wide as if it were a single eye.” Like Er, the man saw souls floating in the air, and deep chasms in the earth, one of which had lustrous streams of different colors pouring into it. He then saw the floating souls being reincarnated into a variety of living things, before a woman intervened and pulled him back to his physical body.(2)
The 14th century Bardo Thodol, also known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, discusses Bardo, or the intermediate state between life and death. It is believed that one’s Ātman, or one’s essential self, passes through this realm before being reborn on earth. The things said to occur in Bardo, including visions of light and encounters with other beings, are also frequently reported by near-death experiencers.(3)
The French physician, Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, published the first known medical report of an NDE in 1766, in which a man entered a painless state of bliss and encountered a spectacular bright light. Monchaux noted that he’d heard of similar stories from people “of all ages and sexes,” and theorized that the patients’ ecstatic feelings were caused by a surge of blood through their systems.(4)
Western, scientific interest in NDEs can otherwise be traced back to the late 19th century. In the early 1870s, the Swiss geologist and mountaineer, Albert Heim, had an NDE during a climbing fall. He proceeded to collect stories from other climbers, workers, and soldiers who had had similar experiences, and shared these stories in print.(5) In 1896, the French Psychologist and Epistemologist, Victor Egger, published on his own study of such experiences in the Revue Philosophique, and outlined four general characteristics: 1) a sense of bliss, 2) a loss of sense of touch and pain, 3) an extreme rapidity of thought and imagination, and in some cases, 4) a life review, where a person is made to re-experience all the most significant moments of their life.(6)
Interest in the phenomenon was rekindled in the late 1960s. In 1969, the Swiss-American psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, published her seminal book On Death and Dying, which introduced the now-famous five stages of grief. However, she also reported that many of her patients reported near-death life reviews, and experiences of meeting deceased family members.(7)
Western interest in near-death experiences was greatly stimulated by psychiatrist Raymond Moody’s 1975 book, Life after Life.(8) Though Moody’s book was a largely qualitative study of the phenomenon, it inspired a new generation of medical researchers, many of whom still dominate the field today. Most notable among them is Bruce Greyson, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, and author of After. In the early 1980s, Greyson developed the Greyson scale, used to quantify the degree to which NDE experiences conform to a list of typical characteristics. This scale is still considered the standard in NDE research today.
In the late seventies, Greyson, Moody, and other NDE researchers, including psychologist Kenneth Ring and cardiologist Michael Sabom, formed the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena, now called the International Association for Near-Death Studies. Together, these researchers guided NDE research away from parapsychology and into a medical framework. In 1982, this same network of medical researchers founded the quarterly, peer-reviewed Journal of Near Death Studies - first called Anabiosis - with Ring, Greyson, and Janice Holden all serving as editors-in-chief. The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has also become home to a number of NDE researchers, including Greyson, Edward and Emily Kelly, and Marieta Pehlivanova.(9) Outside of Academia, Jeffrey Long, physician and radiation oncologist, and his wife, Jody, attorney and NDE researcher, founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation in 1998. Through interviews with experiencers, the Foundation has documented over 5200 cases from around the world.
Characteristics
Greyson defined NDEs as “profound psychological events with transcendental and mystical elements, typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger.”(10) Those who experience NDEs - and live to tell of them - were in the process of dying, but had this process aborted by medical resuscitation, spontaneous reversal, or the conscious realization that they are not, in fact, close to death. Kelly et. al. note that people who are not actually physically close to death can trigger NDEs if they consciously believe that they are.(11)
NDEs are relatively common, and appear to be a global phenomenon, although most of the scientific research on the phenomenon has been based on European and North American populations. An analysis of hospital patients spanning four countries and nine individual studies showed about a 17% incidence among the critically ill.(12) Another study of over 1000 people from 35 different countries showed a general incidence of 10%.(13) A study of the US population found a general incidence of 5%.(14) NDEs do not correlate with age, sex, socioeconomic status, or any other lifestyle variables, including spiritual beliefs or church attendance, although at least one study has found that they may correlate with REM sleep intrusion, a phenomenon associated with narcolepsy.(15)
NDEs are typically “out-of-body” experiences, meaning that the experiencer perceives the world from a perspective outside of their physical body, as if from the perspective of their “soul” or “spirit.” Moody identified 15 commonly reported elements in NDE narratives: the first and most significant, perhaps, is ineffability, or the person’s inability to communicate the experience to others. Other elements include hearing oneself pronounced dead; feelings of peace and bliss; a complete lack of pain; seeing a dark tunnel or a bright light; meeting “spiritual beings”; watching a life review; and the sensation of reaching an uncrossable border or limit.(16) Experiences commonly end with the experiencer flying back into their body, at which point there is usually a sensation of impact. After this, the sense of serenity disappears, and the feeling of pain returns.(17)
The case of Tony Cicoria, a surgeon who had been struck by lightning, provides a fairly typical account of an NDE:
For thousands of years, at least, people all over the world have reported deeply impactful, visionary experiences while just on the verge of death, or just after. Traditional religions have interpreted these experiences as evidence of a spiritual essence beyond the physical body. Though western science has long rejected the idea of an immaterial self, modern research into near-death experiences, or NDEs, has now proven that many occur after the point of bodily death, and thus cannot be produced in the brain. Whether they are evidence of the soul, or some other undiscovered phenomenon, NDEs have put Western materialist scientists on the defensive, and led many researchers to embrace bold new theories of consciousness.
History of NDEs
There are at least two accounts of what we’d now call near-death experiences recorded by the ancient Greeks. The first is The Myth of Er as recounted in Plato’s Republic, written around 360 B.C.E. It tells the story of a soldier named Er who was killed in battle and then came back to life. Er left his body and traveled with many others to a “mysterious place” with two gaping chasms in the earth mirrored by two gaping chasms in the sky. Several judges sat between the chasms, motioning people either upwards to the sky, or downwards into the earth.(1)
The second NDE-like account comes from Plutarch’s Divine Vengeance, written in the late first century, C.E.. Plutarch tells of a man from Soli, Cilicia who struck his head and died, only to return to life at his own funeral. In the intervening period, the man described feeling that “his intelligence was driven from his body,” and said that he could see from all sides, as if his soul had “opened wide as if it were a single eye.” Like Er, the man saw souls floating in the air, and deep chasms in the earth, one of which had lustrous streams of different colors pouring into it. He then saw the floating souls being reincarnated into a variety of living things, before a woman intervened and pulled him back to his physical body.(2)
The 14th century Bardo Thodol, also known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, discusses Bardo, or the intermediate state between life and death. It is believed that one’s Ātman, or one’s essential self, passes through this realm before being reborn on earth. The things said to occur in Bardo, including visions of light and encounters with other beings, are also frequently reported by near-death experiencers.(3)
The French physician, Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, published the first known medical report of an NDE in 1766, in which a man entered a painless state of bliss and encountered a spectacular bright light. Monchaux noted that he’d heard of similar stories from people “of all ages and sexes,” and theorized that the patients’ ecstatic feelings were caused by a surge of blood through their systems.(4)
Western, scientific interest in NDEs can otherwise be traced back to the late 19th century. In the early 1870s, the Swiss geologist and mountaineer, Albert Heim, had an NDE during a climbing fall. He proceeded to collect stories from other climbers, workers, and soldiers who had had similar experiences, and shared these stories in print.(5) In 1896, the French Psychologist and Epistemologist, Victor Egger, published on his own study of such experiences in the Revue Philosophique, and outlined four general characteristics: 1) a sense of bliss, 2) a loss of sense of touch and pain, 3) an extreme rapidity of thought and imagination, and in some cases, 4) a life review, where a person is made to re-experience all the most significant moments of their life.(6)
Interest in the phenomenon was rekindled in the late 1960s. In 1969, the Swiss-American psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, published her seminal book On Death and Dying, which introduced the now-famous five stages of grief. However, she also reported that many of her patients reported near-death life reviews, and experiences of meeting deceased family members.(7)
Western interest in near-death experiences was greatly stimulated by psychiatrist Raymond Moody’s 1975 book, Life after Life.(8) Though Moody’s book was a largely qualitative study of the phenomenon, it inspired a new generation of medical researchers, many of whom still dominate the field today. Most notable among them is Bruce Greyson, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, and author of After. In the early 1980s, Greyson developed the Greyson scale, used to quantify the degree to which NDE experiences conform to a list of typical characteristics. This scale is still considered the standard in NDE research today.
In the late seventies, Greyson, Moody, and other NDE researchers, including psychologist Kenneth Ring and cardiologist Michael Sabom, formed the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena, now called the International Association for Near-Death Studies. Together, these researchers guided NDE research away from parapsychology and into a medical framework. In 1982, this same network of medical researchers founded the quarterly, peer-reviewed Journal of Near Death Studies - first called Anabiosis - with Ring, Greyson, and Janice Holden all serving as editors-in-chief. The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has also become home to a number of NDE researchers, including Greyson, Edward and Emily Kelly, and Marieta Pehlivanova.(9) Outside of Academia, Jeffrey Long, physician and radiation oncologist, and his wife, Jody, attorney and NDE researcher, founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation in 1998. Through interviews with experiencers, the Foundation has documented over 5200 cases from around the world.
Characteristics
Greyson defined NDEs as “profound psychological events with transcendental and mystical elements, typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger.”(10) Those who experience NDEs - and live to tell of them - were in the process of dying, but had this process aborted by medical resuscitation, spontaneous reversal, or the conscious realization that they are not, in fact, close to death. Kelly et. al. note that people who are not actually physically close to death can trigger NDEs if they consciously believe that they are.(11)
NDEs are relatively common, and appear to be a global phenomenon, although most of the scientific research on the phenomenon has been based on European and North American populations. An analysis of hospital patients spanning four countries and nine individual studies showed about a 17% incidence among the critically ill.(12) Another study of over 1000 people from 35 different countries showed a general incidence of 10%.(13) A study of the US population found a general incidence of 5%.(14) NDEs do not correlate with age, sex, socioeconomic status, or any other lifestyle variables, including spiritual beliefs or church attendance, although at least one study has found that they may correlate with REM sleep intrusion, a phenomenon associated with narcolepsy.(15)
NDEs are typically “out-of-body” experiences, meaning that the experiencer perceives the world from a perspective outside of their physical body, as if from the perspective of their “soul” or “spirit.” Moody identified 15 commonly reported elements in NDE narratives: the first and most significant, perhaps, is ineffability, or the person’s inability to communicate the experience to others. Other elements include hearing oneself pronounced dead; feelings of peace and bliss; a complete lack of pain; seeing a dark tunnel or a bright light; meeting “spiritual beings”; watching a life review; and the sensation of reaching an uncrossable border or limit.(16) Experiences commonly end with the experiencer flying back into their body, at which point there is usually a sensation of impact. After this, the sense of serenity disappears, and the feeling of pain returns.(17)
The case of Tony Cicoria, a surgeon who had been struck by lightning, provides a fairly typical account of an NDE:
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I was flying forwards. Bewildered. I looked around. I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' I saw people converging on the body. I saw a woman -- she had been standing waiting to use the phone right behind me -- position herself over my body, give it CPR... I floated up the stairs -- my consciousness came with me. I saw my kids, had the realization that they would be okay. Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light ... an enormous feeling of well-being and peace. The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me... pure thought, pure ecstasy. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up... there was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, 'This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had' -- SLAM! I was back.
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It is common for people who have had an NDE to insist that they experienced a real-life event, and not a hallucination or a dream, claiming it to be every bit as real to them as waking life. Those who have had both an NDE and a hallucination say that there is a distinct qualitative difference between the two experiences.(18) Kenneth Ring has discovered that blind persons - even those blind from birth - report NDEs similar to those of sighted persons. What’s more, there have been several cases where visually-based knowledge acquired during the NDE was later independently verified. Put simply: the blind can see during NDEs.(19)
Recent research has shown that many NDEs occur when a person is unconscious and often apparently clinically dead, with no heartbeat, no breathing, and no brain activity.(20) For example, Parnia et al. have documented the story of a 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, who revealed that he left his body and watched his resuscitation from the ceiling. He described what he saw and heard, including several distinct sounds from some of the medical machines. The patient heard two beeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals, allowing Parnia and his team to determine that the patient was conscious during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This despite the fact that the brain typically shuts down completely 20 - 30 seconds after the heart stops.(21)
Life and Death
Most of those who have experienced an NDE insist that the experience was intensely meaningful, and many claim that it changed their views on life and death. Much of this is rooted in the painless, ecstatic feeling that is frequently experienced. In a study in Southern California in 1983, 70% of participants related feelings of overwhelming peace, calm, and painlessness. Many reported their feelings to be unlike anything that they had ever experienced before. In the case of a woman who had a near fatal heart attack, she said:
Recent research has shown that many NDEs occur when a person is unconscious and often apparently clinically dead, with no heartbeat, no breathing, and no brain activity.(20) For example, Parnia et al. have documented the story of a 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, who revealed that he left his body and watched his resuscitation from the ceiling. He described what he saw and heard, including several distinct sounds from some of the medical machines. The patient heard two beeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals, allowing Parnia and his team to determine that the patient was conscious during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This despite the fact that the brain typically shuts down completely 20 - 30 seconds after the heart stops.(21)
Life and Death
Most of those who have experienced an NDE insist that the experience was intensely meaningful, and many claim that it changed their views on life and death. Much of this is rooted in the painless, ecstatic feeling that is frequently experienced. In a study in Southern California in 1983, 70% of participants related feelings of overwhelming peace, calm, and painlessness. Many reported their feelings to be unlike anything that they had ever experienced before. In the case of a woman who had a near fatal heart attack, she said:
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... I'm not in pain anymore... as though I have shed something... all of my problems. Boy did I feel good. I just felt marvelous. I don't think that there are words in the whole world to tell you. It was beautiful.
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A man whose experience occurred while undergoing quadruple bypass surgery said that
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It was that state of being that we would all like to be in, where everything is perfect, where you have no anxieties, no pressure, no fear whatsoever. Perfection is the only way I can put it.(22)
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But it’s not just about the feeling: often, the content of the NDE can also be deeply meaningful and healing. Sometimes a near-death experiencer perceives living persons not physically present. Far more frequently, however, experiencers perceive deceased loved ones. Typically, they report that these interactions feel as real to them as any real-world interaction, and often result in meaningful exchanges. A woman who was in surgery after hemorrhaging severely and going into shock recounted that
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I had floated out of my body and was looking down on all of this [the doctors and nurses working on her]. I was wearing white. I started floating down the tunnel which had rough looking sides and a blinding, bright light at the end, and I was headed for the lighted end. As I was going through the tunnel I saw my Grandfather's face, and he was smiling at me. He said something like, “it's been a long time. Welcome…” I saw several faces on the wall; some of them I knew and some I did not, but they were all smiling. I was almost to the end and my Great-grandmother, who helped raise me and I was very close to, appeared, and she said “go back; you have a child who needs you. You can come here with us later.” I tried to argue with her, but she told me flatly, “you go back.”(23)
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It is fairly common for experiencers to be told to return to their life on earth, either by a deceased loved one, or some other spiritual entity they encounter.
Patients often report being permanently changed by an NDE.(24) As Steve Taylor writes in his book Spiritual Science, “in the great majority of cases… a person's values and attitude toward life are completely transformed. People often become less materialistic and more altruistic, less self-oriented and more compassionate. They often feel a new sense of purpose, and their relationships become more authentic and intimate. They report becoming more sensitive to beauty and more appreciative of everyday things.”
Most people lose all fear of death after an NDE. As the Dutch cardiologist and NDE researcher, Pim van Lommel has stated, “their experience tells them that death is not the end of everything and that life goes on in one way or another. According to people with the NDE, death is nothing other than a different way of being with an enhanced and broadened consciousness, which is everywhere at once because it is no longer tied to a body.”(25) These changes are typically long-lasting, transformational effects, that often have positive spillover effects in other aspects of one’s health and well-being. For example, research shows that people who have had near-death experiences following suicide attempts very rarely attempt suicide again.(26)
Analysis
The nature of near-death experiences is hotly debated in academia, as well as in the public sphere. Religious leaders, spiritualists, and many scientific researchers argue that people are truly experiencing some alternate form of consciousness not reducible to any known brain or bodily functions.
On the other hand, many debunkers, science educators, and brain researchers working within the materialist paradigm argue that near-death experiences are merely hallucinations of the panicked, dying brain. But with mounting evidence that NDEs can and do occur while experiencers are brain dead, it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend this hypothesis. Some have argued that the popularity of Moody’s book triggered a kind of social hysteria, leading people to report dreams and other known phenomena as NDEs. However, a study done by Long showed that the features reported prior to and after Moody’s book are essentially the same, suggesting that the book had no influence on what people reported.(27) Furthermore, young children, who have fewer cultural and religious beliefs about death, report the same characteristic experiences that adults do.(28)
NDE research raises important questions about the nature of consciousness, and some have questioned whether recent findings can ever be rationalized within the western paradigm of scientific materialism. We have evidence that a person’s consciousness and memory persist during a time when the brain is not functioning, and therefore, cannot be producing hallucinations.(29)
So what is producing the conscious experience of an NDE, if not the brain? The Abrahamic religions - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - would interpret near-death experiences as the soul - the true seat of consciousness - leaving one’s body, and ascending to heaven. Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would argue that this is the Ātman, or absolute self, after leaving one incarnation, and before entering the next. In these contexts, NDEs are simply the continuation of our conscious experience after the end of an incarnation. The reason that these experiences are so blissful and exhilarating is because we are finally experiencing the world in our purest form, unburdened by the pain of a physical body.
After research into psychedelic drugs, the writer and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, proposed that the brain acts as a filter of reality, blocking out all the extraneous information that is available to us at any given time. According to this line of thinking, there is a vast, non-local repository of information that we might call consciousness, or awareness itself. Our brains grab information from this repository then helps us filter out what’s not useful to our survival. By way of analogy, it “tunes” us into the pertinent channels like a radio tunes into a station, while blocking out the “noise” from other broadcasts. Huxley felt that people on psychedelic substances were reducing the brain’s filtering effect, and opening up the “Mind at Large” to these other signals. But his filtering theory would also explain a range of psi phenomena, as well as NDEs. That is, it may be that people who are about to die have this filtering function temporarily disabled, allowing them to experience the totality of all conscious awareness.
While still very much on the fringes of mainstream scientific thought, the idea that consciousness is nonlocal is slowly gaining traction in academia. Various theories explaining how consciousness could be non-local, or not confined to individual brains, have been proposed by scholars from a range of disciplines. For example, Vernon Neppe and Ed Close have proposed the Triadic dimensional vortical paradigm, which proposes a nine-dimensional universe, while Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose have proposed the Orchestrated objective reduction theory, or Orch OR theory of consciousness.(30) Most of these theories assume that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, and primary to all else - including physical reality.
Summary
The NDE is an authentic experience that cannot be simply reduced to hallucinations or psychosis. More so than most anomalous experiences, NDEs also compel physicists and philosophers to question some foundational assumptions of the Western materialist paradigm. Along with other psi phenomena, NDE are helping to force a reevaluation of the relationship between the subjective experience of awareness and the physical brain, and pushing us to consider nonlocal theories of consciousness.
Patients often report being permanently changed by an NDE.(24) As Steve Taylor writes in his book Spiritual Science, “in the great majority of cases… a person's values and attitude toward life are completely transformed. People often become less materialistic and more altruistic, less self-oriented and more compassionate. They often feel a new sense of purpose, and their relationships become more authentic and intimate. They report becoming more sensitive to beauty and more appreciative of everyday things.”
Most people lose all fear of death after an NDE. As the Dutch cardiologist and NDE researcher, Pim van Lommel has stated, “their experience tells them that death is not the end of everything and that life goes on in one way or another. According to people with the NDE, death is nothing other than a different way of being with an enhanced and broadened consciousness, which is everywhere at once because it is no longer tied to a body.”(25) These changes are typically long-lasting, transformational effects, that often have positive spillover effects in other aspects of one’s health and well-being. For example, research shows that people who have had near-death experiences following suicide attempts very rarely attempt suicide again.(26)
Analysis
The nature of near-death experiences is hotly debated in academia, as well as in the public sphere. Religious leaders, spiritualists, and many scientific researchers argue that people are truly experiencing some alternate form of consciousness not reducible to any known brain or bodily functions.
On the other hand, many debunkers, science educators, and brain researchers working within the materialist paradigm argue that near-death experiences are merely hallucinations of the panicked, dying brain. But with mounting evidence that NDEs can and do occur while experiencers are brain dead, it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend this hypothesis. Some have argued that the popularity of Moody’s book triggered a kind of social hysteria, leading people to report dreams and other known phenomena as NDEs. However, a study done by Long showed that the features reported prior to and after Moody’s book are essentially the same, suggesting that the book had no influence on what people reported.(27) Furthermore, young children, who have fewer cultural and religious beliefs about death, report the same characteristic experiences that adults do.(28)
NDE research raises important questions about the nature of consciousness, and some have questioned whether recent findings can ever be rationalized within the western paradigm of scientific materialism. We have evidence that a person’s consciousness and memory persist during a time when the brain is not functioning, and therefore, cannot be producing hallucinations.(29)
So what is producing the conscious experience of an NDE, if not the brain? The Abrahamic religions - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - would interpret near-death experiences as the soul - the true seat of consciousness - leaving one’s body, and ascending to heaven. Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would argue that this is the Ātman, or absolute self, after leaving one incarnation, and before entering the next. In these contexts, NDEs are simply the continuation of our conscious experience after the end of an incarnation. The reason that these experiences are so blissful and exhilarating is because we are finally experiencing the world in our purest form, unburdened by the pain of a physical body.
After research into psychedelic drugs, the writer and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, proposed that the brain acts as a filter of reality, blocking out all the extraneous information that is available to us at any given time. According to this line of thinking, there is a vast, non-local repository of information that we might call consciousness, or awareness itself. Our brains grab information from this repository then helps us filter out what’s not useful to our survival. By way of analogy, it “tunes” us into the pertinent channels like a radio tunes into a station, while blocking out the “noise” from other broadcasts. Huxley felt that people on psychedelic substances were reducing the brain’s filtering effect, and opening up the “Mind at Large” to these other signals. But his filtering theory would also explain a range of psi phenomena, as well as NDEs. That is, it may be that people who are about to die have this filtering function temporarily disabled, allowing them to experience the totality of all conscious awareness.
While still very much on the fringes of mainstream scientific thought, the idea that consciousness is nonlocal is slowly gaining traction in academia. Various theories explaining how consciousness could be non-local, or not confined to individual brains, have been proposed by scholars from a range of disciplines. For example, Vernon Neppe and Ed Close have proposed the Triadic dimensional vortical paradigm, which proposes a nine-dimensional universe, while Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose have proposed the Orchestrated objective reduction theory, or Orch OR theory of consciousness.(30) Most of these theories assume that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, and primary to all else - including physical reality.
Summary
The NDE is an authentic experience that cannot be simply reduced to hallucinations or psychosis. More so than most anomalous experiences, NDEs also compel physicists and philosophers to question some foundational assumptions of the Western materialist paradigm. Along with other psi phenomena, NDE are helping to force a reevaluation of the relationship between the subjective experience of awareness and the physical brain, and pushing us to consider nonlocal theories of consciousness.
Notes:
1) “He [Er] said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to them, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place.” Plato, The Republic of Plato, Trans. Benjamin Jowett, Revised Edition (New York: Willey Book Co., 1901), 322.
2) Marinus van der Sluijs, “Three Ancient Reports of Near-Death Experiences: Bremmer Revisited,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 225-26.
3) Ornella Corazza, Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection (London: Routledge, 2008), 23.
4) Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, Anecdotes de Médicine… (Lille: Chez J. B. Henry, 1766), 43-45.
5) Michael Nahm, “Albert Heim (1849–1937): The Multifaceted Geologist Who Influenced Research Into Near-death Experiences and Suggestion Therapy,” Explore 12, no. 4 (July - August 2016), 256-58.
6) Victor Egger, "Le moi des mourants," Revue Philosophique XLI (1896): 26–38, https://carnets2psycho.net/theorie/classique36.html.
7) Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (London: Routledge, 1969).
8) Raymond Moody, Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of Bodily Death (Atlanta, GA: Mockingbird Books, 1975).
9) “Faculty and Staff- Division of Perceptual Studies,” University of Virginia School of Medicine, accessed November 11, 2023, https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff.
10) Bruce Greyson, “Near-death experiences,” In Varieties of anomalous experiences: examining the scientific evidence, ed. Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner (Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association, 2000), 315–52; Marie Thonnard et al., “Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories,” PLoS One 8, no. 3 (2013): e57620.
11) Edward F. Kelly, Emily W. Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 369.
12) Nancy L. Zingrone, and Carlos S. Alvarado, “Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: features, circumstances, and incidence,” in The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, eds. J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009), 17–40; Bruce Greyson, The Science of Near-Death Experiences, ed. John C. Hagan, III (Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2017), 19.
13) Daniel Kondziella et al., “Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion,” PeerJ 7, no. e7585 (August 27, 2019).
14) Linda J. Griffith, “Near-Death Experiences and Psychotherapy,” Psychiatry (Edgmont) 6, no. 10 (October, 2009): 35–42.
15) Kondziella et al., “Prevalence of.”
16) Moody, Life After Life.
17) Oliver Sacks, “Seeing God in the Third Millennium,” The Atlantic (December, 2012).
18) Michael B. Sabom, “Recollections of Death,” (1982) in R. Craig Hogan’s Your Eternal Self, Kindle Edition (Greater Reality Publications, 2008), location 3319.
19) Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 101-47.
20) Jeffrey Long, Evidence of the Afterlife (New York, NY, USA: HarperOne, 2010), 5.
21) Leslie Kean, Surviving Death (New York, NY, USA: Crown Archetype, 2017), 94-95.
22) J. Timothy Green and Penelope Friedman, “Near-Death Experiences in a Southern California Population,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 3, no. 1 (June 1983): 77-95.
23) Kelly et al., Irreducible Mind, 369-70.
24) Pim van Lommel, “Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234 (2011): 19–28.
25) Pim van Lommel, Endless consciousness: a concept based on scientific studies on near – death experience In Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences (New York, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2009), 171.
26) Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science, Kindle edition (Watkins Publishing, 2018) location 1689-1700.
27) Long, Evidence of the Afterlife, 66-67.
28) Enrico Facco, Christian Agrillo, and Bruce Greyson, “Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered states of consciousness,” Medical Hypotheses 85 (2015): 85–93.
29) van Lommel, Near-death experiences, 19–28.
30) Helané Wahbeh, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard, and Arnaud Delorme, “What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models,” Frontiers 13 (September 7, 2022).
Sources:
Corazza, Ornella. Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection. London: Routledge, 2008.
Du Monchaux, Pierre-Jean. Anecdotes de Médicine… Lille: Chez J. B. Henry, 1766.
Egger, Victor. "Le moi des mourants." Revue Philosophique XLI (1896): 26–38. https://carnets2psycho.net/theorie/classique36.html.
Facco, Enrico, Christian Agrillo, and Bruce Greyson. “Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered states of consciousness.” Medical Hypotheses 85 (July 2015): 85–93. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25892488.
Green, J. Timothy and Penelope Friedman. “Near-Death Experiences in a Southern California Population.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 3, no. 1 (June 1983): 77-95. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1051979/m2/1/high_res_d/vol3-no1-77.pdf.
Greyson, Bruce. “Near-death experiences.” In Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence, edited by Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, 315–52. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2000. https://researchgate.net/publication/232515111_Varieties_of_anomalous_experience_Examining_the_scientific_evidence.
Greyson, Bruce. In The Science of Near-Death Experiences, edited by John C. Hagan, III. Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2017, 19.
Griffith, Linda J. “Near-Death Experiences and Psychotherapy.” Psychiatry (Edgmont) 6, no. 10 (October, 2009): 35–42.
Kean, Leslie. Surviving Death. New York, NY, USA: Crown Archetype, 2017.
Kelly, Edward F., Emily W. Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Kondziella, Daniel et al. “Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion.” PeerJ 7, no. e7585 (August 27, 2019). https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6716500.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Routledge, 1969.
Long, Jeffrey. Evidence of the Afterlife. New York, NY, USA: HarperOne, 2010. https://archive.org/details/evidenceofafterl00long/mode/2up.
Moody, Raymond. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of Bodily Death. Atlanta, GA, USA: Mockingbird Books, 1975.
Nahm, Michael. “Albert Heim (1849–1937): The Multifaceted Geologist Who Influenced Research Into Near-death Experiences and Suggestion Therapy.” Explore 12, no. 4 (July - August 2016): 256-58.
Plato, The Republic of Plato. Translation, Benjamin Jowett. Revised Edition. New York: Willey Book Co., (375 BCE) 1901.
Ring, Kenneth, and Sharon Cooper. “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 101-47. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799333.
Sabom, Michael B. “Recollections of Death” (1982). In R. Craig Hogan’s Your Eternal Self, Kindle Edition (Greater Reality Publications, 2008), location 3319. https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofd0000sabo. https://archive.org/details/youreternalself0000rcra/mode/2up.
Sacks, Oliver. “Seeing God in the Third Millennium.” The Atlantic. December, 2012.
Taylor, Steve. Spiritual Science, Kindle edition, Watkins Publishing, 2018.
Thonnard, Marie et al. “Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories.” PLoS One 8, no. 3 (2013): e57620. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23544039.
University of Virginia School of Medicine. “Faculty and Staff- Division of Perceptual Studies.” Accessed November 11, 2023. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff.
van der Sluijs, Marinus. “Three Ancient Reports of Near-Death Experiences: Bremmer Revisited.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 225-26.
van Lommel, Pim. Endless consciousness: a concept based on scientific studies on near – death experience In Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences. New York, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2009. https://researchgate.net/publication/227186754_Endless_Consciousness_A_Concept_Based_on_Scientific_Studies_of_Near-Death_Experiences.
van Lommel, Pim. “Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234 (2011): 19–28. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21988246.
Wahbeh, Helané, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard, and Arnaud Delorme. “What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models.” Frontiers 13 (September 7, 2022). https://frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594/full.
Zingrone, Nancy L., and Carlos S. Alvarado. “Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: features, circumstances, and incidence,” in The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, edited by J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009. 17–40.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft writing by Barry Bates. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
1) “He [Er] said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to them, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place.” Plato, The Republic of Plato, Trans. Benjamin Jowett, Revised Edition (New York: Willey Book Co., 1901), 322.
2) Marinus van der Sluijs, “Three Ancient Reports of Near-Death Experiences: Bremmer Revisited,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 225-26.
3) Ornella Corazza, Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection (London: Routledge, 2008), 23.
4) Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, Anecdotes de Médicine… (Lille: Chez J. B. Henry, 1766), 43-45.
5) Michael Nahm, “Albert Heim (1849–1937): The Multifaceted Geologist Who Influenced Research Into Near-death Experiences and Suggestion Therapy,” Explore 12, no. 4 (July - August 2016), 256-58.
6) Victor Egger, "Le moi des mourants," Revue Philosophique XLI (1896): 26–38, https://carnets2psycho.net/theorie/classique36.html.
7) Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (London: Routledge, 1969).
8) Raymond Moody, Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of Bodily Death (Atlanta, GA: Mockingbird Books, 1975).
9) “Faculty and Staff- Division of Perceptual Studies,” University of Virginia School of Medicine, accessed November 11, 2023, https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff.
10) Bruce Greyson, “Near-death experiences,” In Varieties of anomalous experiences: examining the scientific evidence, ed. Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner (Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association, 2000), 315–52; Marie Thonnard et al., “Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories,” PLoS One 8, no. 3 (2013): e57620.
11) Edward F. Kelly, Emily W. Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 369.
12) Nancy L. Zingrone, and Carlos S. Alvarado, “Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: features, circumstances, and incidence,” in The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, eds. J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009), 17–40; Bruce Greyson, The Science of Near-Death Experiences, ed. John C. Hagan, III (Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2017), 19.
13) Daniel Kondziella et al., “Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion,” PeerJ 7, no. e7585 (August 27, 2019).
14) Linda J. Griffith, “Near-Death Experiences and Psychotherapy,” Psychiatry (Edgmont) 6, no. 10 (October, 2009): 35–42.
15) Kondziella et al., “Prevalence of.”
16) Moody, Life After Life.
17) Oliver Sacks, “Seeing God in the Third Millennium,” The Atlantic (December, 2012).
18) Michael B. Sabom, “Recollections of Death,” (1982) in R. Craig Hogan’s Your Eternal Self, Kindle Edition (Greater Reality Publications, 2008), location 3319.
19) Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 101-47.
20) Jeffrey Long, Evidence of the Afterlife (New York, NY, USA: HarperOne, 2010), 5.
21) Leslie Kean, Surviving Death (New York, NY, USA: Crown Archetype, 2017), 94-95.
22) J. Timothy Green and Penelope Friedman, “Near-Death Experiences in a Southern California Population,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 3, no. 1 (June 1983): 77-95.
23) Kelly et al., Irreducible Mind, 369-70.
24) Pim van Lommel, “Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234 (2011): 19–28.
25) Pim van Lommel, Endless consciousness: a concept based on scientific studies on near – death experience In Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences (New York, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2009), 171.
26) Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science, Kindle edition (Watkins Publishing, 2018) location 1689-1700.
27) Long, Evidence of the Afterlife, 66-67.
28) Enrico Facco, Christian Agrillo, and Bruce Greyson, “Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered states of consciousness,” Medical Hypotheses 85 (2015): 85–93.
29) van Lommel, Near-death experiences, 19–28.
30) Helané Wahbeh, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard, and Arnaud Delorme, “What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models,” Frontiers 13 (September 7, 2022).
Sources:
Corazza, Ornella. Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection. London: Routledge, 2008.
Du Monchaux, Pierre-Jean. Anecdotes de Médicine… Lille: Chez J. B. Henry, 1766.
Egger, Victor. "Le moi des mourants." Revue Philosophique XLI (1896): 26–38. https://carnets2psycho.net/theorie/classique36.html.
Facco, Enrico, Christian Agrillo, and Bruce Greyson. “Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered states of consciousness.” Medical Hypotheses 85 (July 2015): 85–93. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25892488.
Green, J. Timothy and Penelope Friedman. “Near-Death Experiences in a Southern California Population.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 3, no. 1 (June 1983): 77-95. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1051979/m2/1/high_res_d/vol3-no1-77.pdf.
Greyson, Bruce. “Near-death experiences.” In Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence, edited by Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, 315–52. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2000. https://researchgate.net/publication/232515111_Varieties_of_anomalous_experience_Examining_the_scientific_evidence.
Greyson, Bruce. In The Science of Near-Death Experiences, edited by John C. Hagan, III. Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2017, 19.
Griffith, Linda J. “Near-Death Experiences and Psychotherapy.” Psychiatry (Edgmont) 6, no. 10 (October, 2009): 35–42.
Kean, Leslie. Surviving Death. New York, NY, USA: Crown Archetype, 2017.
Kelly, Edward F., Emily W. Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Kondziella, Daniel et al. “Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion.” PeerJ 7, no. e7585 (August 27, 2019). https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6716500.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Routledge, 1969.
Long, Jeffrey. Evidence of the Afterlife. New York, NY, USA: HarperOne, 2010. https://archive.org/details/evidenceofafterl00long/mode/2up.
Moody, Raymond. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of Bodily Death. Atlanta, GA, USA: Mockingbird Books, 1975.
Nahm, Michael. “Albert Heim (1849–1937): The Multifaceted Geologist Who Influenced Research Into Near-death Experiences and Suggestion Therapy.” Explore 12, no. 4 (July - August 2016): 256-58.
Plato, The Republic of Plato. Translation, Benjamin Jowett. Revised Edition. New York: Willey Book Co., (375 BCE) 1901.
Ring, Kenneth, and Sharon Cooper. “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 101-47. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799333.
Sabom, Michael B. “Recollections of Death” (1982). In R. Craig Hogan’s Your Eternal Self, Kindle Edition (Greater Reality Publications, 2008), location 3319. https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofd0000sabo. https://archive.org/details/youreternalself0000rcra/mode/2up.
Sacks, Oliver. “Seeing God in the Third Millennium.” The Atlantic. December, 2012.
Taylor, Steve. Spiritual Science, Kindle edition, Watkins Publishing, 2018.
Thonnard, Marie et al. “Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories.” PLoS One 8, no. 3 (2013): e57620. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23544039.
University of Virginia School of Medicine. “Faculty and Staff- Division of Perceptual Studies.” Accessed November 11, 2023. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff.
van der Sluijs, Marinus. “Three Ancient Reports of Near-Death Experiences: Bremmer Revisited.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 225-26.
van Lommel, Pim. Endless consciousness: a concept based on scientific studies on near – death experience In Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences. New York, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2009. https://researchgate.net/publication/227186754_Endless_Consciousness_A_Concept_Based_on_Scientific_Studies_of_Near-Death_Experiences.
van Lommel, Pim. “Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234 (2011): 19–28. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21988246.
Wahbeh, Helané, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard, and Arnaud Delorme. “What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models.” Frontiers 13 (September 7, 2022). https://frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594/full.
Zingrone, Nancy L., and Carlos S. Alvarado. “Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: features, circumstances, and incidence,” in The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, edited by J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009. 17–40.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research and draft writing by Barry Bates. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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