Near-death Experience Explained

Near-death expe­ri­ences (NDE­s) are com­mon enough that they have entered our every­day lan­guage. Phrases like “my whole life flashed before my eyes” and “go to the light” come from decades of research into these strange, seem­ingly super­nat­ural expe­ri­ences that some peo­ple have when they’re at the brink of death. But what exactly are NDEs? Are they hal­lu­ci­na­tions? Spir­i­tual expe­ri­ences? Proof of life after death? Or are they sim­ply chem­i­cal changes in the brain and sen­sory organs in the moments prior to death?

In this arti­cle, we’ll dis­cuss what makes an expe­ri­ence an NDE and who typ­i­cally has them. We’ll also explore spir­i­tual, philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tific the­o­ries for why they happen.

Dr. Ray­mond Moody coined the term “near-death expe­ri­ence” in his 1975 book, “Life After Life.” Many credit Moody’s work with bring­ing th­e con­cept of the near-death expe­ri­ence to the public’s atten­tion, but reports of such expe­ri­ences have occurred through­out his­tory. Plato’s “Repub­lic,” writ­ten in 360 B.C.E., con­tains the tale of a sol­dier named Er who had an NDE after being killed in bat­tle. Er described his soul leav­ing his body, being judged along with o­ther souls and see­ing heaven [ref].

For the pur­poses of this arti­cle, a near-death expe­ri­ence is any expe­ri­ence in which some­one close to death or suf­fer­ing from some trauma or dis­ease that might lead to death per­ceives events that seem to be impos­si­ble, unusual or super­nat­ural. While there are many ques­tions about NDEs, one thing is cer­tain — they do exist. Thou­sands of peo­ple have actu­ally per­ceived sim­i­lar sen­sa­tions while close to death. The debate is over whether or not they actu­ally expe­ri­enced what they perceived.

Near-death Expe­ri­ence Traits

Most NDEs share cer­tain com­mon traits, but not all NDEs have every trait and some NDEs don’t fol­low a pat­tern at all. Here are the traits that “typ­i­cal” NDEs share:

• Int­ense, pure bright light — Some­times this intense (but not painful) light fills the room. In other cases, the sub­ject sees a light that they feel rep­re­sents either Heaven or God.
• Out-of-body expe­ri­ences (OBE) — The sub­ject feels that he has left his body. He can look down and see it, often describ­ing the sight of doc­tors work­ing on him. In some cases, the subject’s “spirit” then flies out of the room, into ­the sky and some­times into space.
• Enter­ing into another realm or dimen­sion — Depend­ing on the subject’s reli­gious beliefs and the nature of the expe­ri­ence, he may per­ceive this realm as Heaven or, in rare cases, as Hell.
• Spirit beings — Dur­ing the OBE, the sub­ject encoun­ters “beings of light,” or other rep­re­sen­ta­tions of spir­i­tual enti­ties. He may per­ceive these as deceased loved ones, angels, saints or God.
• The tun­nel — Many NDE sub­jects find them­selves in a tun­nel with a light at its end. They may encounter spirit beings as they pass through the tunnel.
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with spir­its — Before the NDE ends, many sub­jects report some form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a spirit being. This is often expressed a “strong male voice” telling them that it is not their time and to go back to their body. Some sub­jects report being told to choose between going into the light or return­ing to their earthly body. Oth­ers feel they have been com­pelled to return to their body by a voice­less com­mand, pos­si­bly com­ing from God.
• Life review — This trait is also called “the panoramic life review.” The sub­ject sees his entire life in a flash­back. These can be very detailed or very brief. The sub­ject may also per­ceive some form of judg­ment by nearby spirit entities.

Near-death expe­ri­ences and out-of-body expe­ri­ences are some­times grouped together, but there are key dif­fer­ences. An OBE can be a com­po­nent of an NDE, but some peo­ple expe­ri­ence OBEs in cir­cum­stances that have noth­ing to do with death or dying. They may still have spir­i­tual ele­ments or feel­ings of calm. OBEs can hap­pen spon­ta­neously, or drugs or med­i­ta­tion can induce them.

Who Has NDEs?

In 1982, poll­ster George Gallup, Jr. and author William Proc­tor released “Adven­tures in Immor­tal­ity,” a book about NDEs based on two Gallup polls specifica­lly address­ing near-death and belief in the after­life. This poll remains the most widely used source for sta­tis­tics about NDEs.

Gallup and Proc­tor found that 15 per­cent of all Amer­i­cans who had been in near-death sit­u­a­tions reported NDEs. Of those, 9 per­cent included a “clas­sic out-of-body expe­ri­ence,” while 11 per­cent included enter­ing another realm or dimen­sion and 8 per­cent fea­tured the pres­ence of spir­i­tual beings [ref]. Only 1 per­cent reported neg­a­tive NDEs. But these num­bers are more than 20 years old, and other researchers, whose stud­ies are usu­ally on a smaller scale, report sta­tis­tics on NDEs that can vary widely from the 1982 poll.

A sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of more than 100 NDE sub­jects revealed that prior reli­gious belief and prior knowl­edge of NDEs did not have an appre­cia­ble effect on the like­li­hood of hav­ing an NDE .

Other research has focused on the effect an NDE has on the subject’s life. Ken­neth Ring, one of the most pro­lific researchers and authors of NDE stud­ies, reports a large num­ber of sub­jects who gain self-confidence and become more extro­verted after an expe­ri­ence. One of Ring’s stud­ies quan­ti­fied changes in sub­jects’ atti­tudes toward life. These gen­er­ally include a sense of pur­pose in life, an appre­ci­a­tion of life, and increase in com­pas­sion, patience and under­stand­ing and an over­all feel­ing of per­sonal strength. A small per­cent­age of sub­jects reported feel­ings of fear, depres­sion and a focus on death. Ring also found that NDE sub­jects tend to feel a height­ened sense of reli­gious feel­ing and belief in a spir­i­tual world. How­ever, he notes that this does not nec­es­sar­ily trans­late into an increase in church atten­dance — it is more of an inter­nal, per­sonal increase in reli­gious and spir­i­tual feel­ings. Finally, peo­ple who go through NDEs often find that they do not fear death, and feel that a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence will be await­ing them when they actu­ally die.

Super­nat­ural Theories

The­o­ries explain­ing near-death expe­ri­ences fall into two basic cat­e­gories: scientific­ expla­na­tions (includ­ing med­ical, phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal) and super­nat­ural expla­na­tions (includ­ing spir­i­tual and reli­gious). Of course, these expla­na­tions can be nei­ther proven nor dis­proven. Accep­tance of super­nat­ural expla­na­tions is based on faith and spir­i­tual and cul­tural background.

The most basic super­nat­ural expla­na­tion is that some­one who goes through an NDE is actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing and remem­ber­ing things that hap­pen to their dis­em­bod­ied con­scious­ness. When they are near death, their soul leaves their body and they begin to per­ceive things that they nor­mally can­not. The soul goes through the bor­der between our world and the after­life, usu­ally rep­re­sented by a tun­nel with a light at the end. While on this jour­ney, the soul encoun­ters other spir­i­tual enti­ties (souls), and may even encounter a divine entity, which many sub­jects per­ceive as God. They are offered a glimpse into another realm of being, often thought to be Heaven, but they are then pulled back, or choose to go back, into their earthly body.

Belief in astral pro­jec­tion con­nects NDEs with other forms of out-of-body expe­ri­ences. Astral pro­jec­tion is the abil­ity of an “astral self” to travel out­side the body. In an NDE, this astral self, or soul, spon­ta­neously leaves the body and trav­els freely to other places. A few cases of NDEs seem to offer proof that peo­ple actu­ally expe­ri­enced events from a point of view dif­fer­ent from that of their earthly body. Peo­ple who were uncon­scious, non-responsive, had their eyes closed or had been declared clin­i­cally dead have reported details of pro­ce­dures done to them and peo­ple who were present in the room [ref]. Some NDE sub­jects who suf­fered from per­ma­nent blind­ness have report­edly been able to iden­tify the color of a doctor’s shirt, for exam­ple [ref].

For those with a strong belief in Judeo-Christian the­ol­ogy, NDEs rep­re­sent proof that we have souls, that they con­tinue to exist after we die and that Heaven and Hell are real places. Some believe that NDEs are the work of Satan, who seeks to exploit people’s vul­ner­a­bil­ity at the time by appear­ing as “an angel of light.” Satan’s ulti­mate rea­son for this decep­tion is unclear.

Other NDE the­o­ries are a bit more eso­teric. Some believe that an NDE rep­re­sents a psy­chic con­nec­tion to higher-level intel­li­gent beings from another dimen­sion. These beings may be humans who have evolved their souls beyond the birth-death-reincarnation cycle, thus offer­ing a glimpse of humanity’s future as high-order spir­i­tual beings. Some­times, an NDE can even offer a lit­eral view into the future, as in the apoc­a­lypse prophecy NDEs men­tioned earlier.

It is inter­est­ing to note that non-Judeo-Christian reli­gions have sto­ries and descrip­tions of death that seem to explain many of the com­mon NDE traits. Bud­dhism, for exam­ple, describes “the clear light of death,” as well as demonic embod­i­ments of moral fail­ure. The soul’s goal is to rec­og­nize both the light and the appari­tions as pro­jec­tions of the soul’s own nature, not some­thing objec­tively real. If that hap­pens, the soul may escape the birth-death-reincarnation cycle and reach nirvana.

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