Near-death experiences

Near-death experiences

Near-death experiences are useful reference points for essays on religious experience and life after death. Jon Mayled guides us through the territory of this complex area

Jon Mayled

As J. M. Barrie wrote in Peter Pan (1904), ‘To die would be an awfully big adventure.’ Whether death really is an awfully big adventure or the ‘final frontier’, the one fact we do have is that in reality we have no idea of what, if anything, comes next.

There are many philosophical discussions about death and any possible future existence. They all present ideas but there is no proof. No proof, that is, unless we take paranormal activities into account. However, these are largely dismissed by sceptics due to lack of evidence. Worldwide there are more people who believe in a religious-based concept of an afterlife of reward or punishment than in a spirit world present on Earth.

Those with a religious belief in reincarnation probably have a simpler belief that is subject to fewer challenges. Again, there is no scientific proof, but this surely applies to all religious beliefs and concepts. Tibetan Buddhists believe that any future Dalai Lama will, of necessity, be a reincarnation of a previous one.

What do NDEs prove?

The questions to be raised here are, ‘What is the validity of near-death experiences (NDEs)?’ and ‘Do NDEs offer any proof of a post-life existence?’

NDEs are found across cultures and civilisations and are certainly not limited to the Western world. For thousands of years, people have written about NDEs in entirely different parts of the world, and all these accounts are remarkably similar.

Recent research by Gregory Shushan into NDEs across cultures analysed the afterlife beliefs of five ancient civilisations (Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, Sumerian and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, Vedic India, pre-Buddhist China and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica) and compared these with contemporary accounts. Shushan’s research indicated that the authors of related sacred texts were familiar with NDEs.

In 1980 Kenneth Ring divided the stages of NDEs as follows:

1 peace

2 body separation

3 entering darkness

4 seeing the light

5 entering the light

NDEs are reported by people who nearly died or were pronounced clinically dead before being revived. People born blind have reportedly been able to ‘see’ during an NDE. The person undergoing the experience can hear people’s voices and there is a loud buzzing or ringing noise. People feel that they are floating down on their body and can sometimes clearly see themselves in the room (and accurately describe what was happening when they have been brought back to life). Many experience a feeling of light or warmth and then are suddenly jolted back into their physical body.

Case study: Pam Reynolds

In the summer of 1991, 35-year-old Pam Reynolds learned she had a life-threatening bulge in an artery in her brain. Her neurosurgeon, Robert Spetzler, told her that in order to operate he would have to stop her heart. During that time her brain function would cease. By all clinical measures, she would be dead for up to at least 1 hour.

While Reynolds was under anaesthesia, leads from a machine that emitted a clicking sound were plugged into her ears to gauge her brainstem function (the brainstem plays a part in controlling hearing as well as other involuntary activities). Additional instruments tracked heartbeat, breathing, temperature and other vital signs. Her limbs were restrained; her eyes were lubricated and then taped shut. As Dr Spetzler powered up the surgical saw to open the patient’s skull, Reynolds felt herself leave her body. From a position just above Dr Spetzler’s shoulders, she looked down on the operation and ‘saw’ Spetzler holding something that looked like an electric toothbrush.

A female voice complained that the patient’s blood vessels were too small. It appeared to Reynolds that they were about to operate on her groin. She then saw three Asian doctors enter the room to observe her operation. The middle doctor gestured to someone outside the window before leaving the theatre. Reynolds then assumed that whatever they were doing inside her skull had triggered a hallucination. Even though her eyes and ears were effectively sealed shut, what she perceived was actually happening. The surgical saw did resemble an electric toothbrush. Surgeons were, indeed, working on her groin (catheters had to be threaded up to her heart to connect to a heart–lung machine). Dr Spetzler gave the order to bring Reynolds to ‘standstill’, draining the blood from her body. By every reading of every instrument, life left her body.

She wandered down a tunnel towards a light. Here were her long-dead grandmother and her relatives and friends. Time seemed to stop. An uncle led her back to her body and told her to return to it. She said it felt like plunging into a pool of ice water.

Afterwards, in discussion with Dr Spetzler, Reynolds found out that all the things she remembered from the operating theatre were true.

Medical explanations

Medical professionals suggest that these experiences happen to the dying brain, possibly because the blood supply to the brain is being cut off (some fighter pilots who black out report similar effects, due to lack of oxygen). However, during ‘standstill’ Pam’s brain was found ‘dead’ by all three clinical tests — her electroencephalogram was silent, her brainstem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain.

Some scientists theorise that NDEs are produced by brain chemistry, but Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and leading authority on NDEs, believes that this view falls far short of the facts. Dr Fenwick describes the state of the brain during an NDE as follows:

‘The brain isn’t functioning. It’s not there. It’s destroyed. It’s abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences… an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don’t know what’s happening and the brain isn’t working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won’t remember anything. But yet, after one of these experiences [an NDE], people come out with clear, lucid memories… . This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact.’

Dr Larry Dossey writes, ‘The modern tradition of equating death with an ensuing nothingness can be abandoned. For there is no reason to believe that human death severs the quality of the oneness in the universe’ (2013, One Mind).

Jon Mayled is the author of many religious studies textbooks.