near-death experience

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People who come close to death and survive often report remarkable experiences. Feelings of peace, happiness, and even joy are common, which seems paradoxical in the circumstances. Many survivors report having rushed down a dark tunnel towards a bright light — although the tunnel itself can look like anything from tiny stars or spirals of light, to the inside of a sewer pipe or an underground cave. In one study, about a third of near-death survivors reported out of body experiences, in which they seemed to leave their body and were able to watch what was happening from a distance, as though as an impartial observer. Less often they recalled leaving the scene of (near) death and travelling elsewhere. Finally, some people report wonderful heavenly scenes, peopled with angels, spiritual beings, or deceased friends and relatives. Less commonly they arrive at some kind of barrier and have to decide to return, or not. A small proportion report a ‘life review’ in which scenes from their life flash before their inner eyes, often all at once, or with no sense of passing time. This life review is sometimes remembered as an ordeal, with religious figures making judgements in a great book, but it can be purely personal, leading to calm acceptance and a re-evaluation of one's life and deeds.

After a near-death experience many people report that their whole attitude to life is changed. They are less concerned with material things and more interested in helping others. Research confirms these changes but it is not clear whether they are a consequence of the experience itself or just of having been so close to death.

Not all near-death experiences are blissful, and recent research has discovered an increasing number of hellish experiences — although just how many is hard to estimate, since people may be less likely to report them, and more anxious to forget. In many religions suicide is treated as a sin, so believers might expect those who attempt suicide to be especially likely to have hellish experiences. In fact they mostly report blissful or peaceful feelings, and the effect, far from encouraging another suicide attempt, seems to be a renewed enthusiasm for life.

The term ‘near-death experience’ became popular only after Raymond Moody's best-selling collection of accounts in 1975. However, similar reports had previously been collected from people who subsequently did die (i.e. deathbed experiences). In fact, reports of such experiences are widespread in many ages and cultures, and in literature, art, and film. Plato describes one in the Republic, Tibetan Buddhist literature includes the ‘returned from the dead’ writings, and there are myths from as far apart as ancient Greece, nineteenth-century native Americans, and Lithuanian folklore. In contemporary research, similar reports have been collected from Iceland, Britain, America, and India. In these accounts the basic features tend to be similar (including tunnels, lights, out-of-body excursions, and visions) but the details vary. For example, religious figures are often seen, but usually of the person's own religion. No Hindu is known to have seen Jesus, nor any Christian to have seen Hindu gods.

A few sceptics attribute the experiences either to wishful thinking or to taking drugs. This seems most unlikely, given the cross-cultural findings, and research showing that most drugs tend to reduce the clarity and complexity of near-death experiences. The important question is therefore why these experiences occur in a similar form all across the world.

The main contenders are either that near-death experiences are a glimpse of life after death, or that they are the effect of changes in an almost dying brain. The after-death hypothesis cannot be proven. If there is life after death, these experiences may tell us what it is like, but since none of the people concerned actually died we can never be sure. The closest we come to evidence is the claim that, during the experience, some people were able to see events at a distance that they could not possibly have known about or guessed. These claims are few, and none is substantiated by independent witnesses or physical evidence, although the best examples are probably those in which patients were able to describe complex medical procedures that occurred while they were comatose or even clinically dead.

There are several theories to explain how coming close to death can give rise to near-death experiences. Lack of oxygen is often implicated, although many near-death experiences occur when people are not deprived of oxygen, as in falls from mountains, during suicide attempts by jumping from heights, or after accidents. In such situations, however, the production and actions of various hormones and neurotransmitters may be affected. There are theories based on stimulation of receptors in nerve cell membranes called NMDA receptors, on the effects of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and on the level of endorphins (the brain's own morphine-like chemicals). Endorphins are known to produce positive emotions and reduction of pain, and may be responsible for the blissful feelings in the midst of pain and fear. Disruption of the brain's neurotransmitters can produce random or excessive firing of neurons and this, depending on where it occurs, may produce the other experiences. For example, electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe of the cerebral hemispheres can produce life reviews and sensations of floating or flying, while random firing in the parts of the visual cortex (which also occurs with drugs such as LSD) causes the perception of lights, tunnels, and spirals.

These physiological explanations can account for much of near-death experiences, and may in time provide a complete account. Even so, they can never disprove the possibility of life after death. Some people may still prefer to believe that the experience is a glimpse of the next world rather than the product of the dying brain.

— Susan Blackmore

Bibliography

• Bailey, L. W. and Yates, J. (ed.) (1996). The near-death experience: a reader. Routledge, New York and London.
• Blackmore, S. J. (1993). Dying to live: science and the near death experience. Prometheus, Buffalo, NY.
• Moody, R. A. (1975). Life after life. Mockingbird, Atlanta, GA

The subjective observation of someone who has either been close to clinical death or who may have recovered after having been declared dead. Many claim to have witnessed similar episodes of passing through a tunnel toward a bright light and encountering people who have preceded them in death.

Individuals who have shown many of the characteristics of death (stopped heart, flat brain scan, etc.) but have survived and been brought back to consciousness often report experiences that seem to have a bearing on the questions of individual survival of death and the possible existence of a human soul or surviving individual consciousness. Such experiences have been studied in modern times under the category of "near-death experiences."

Common to many such experiences is the powerful sensation of rushing through a long dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. This light brings an ecstatic feeling of joy, peace, and freedom from the body. Often the tunnel experience is preceded by a detached awareness in which some higher reality is interfused with perception of the physical environment surrounding the body, which may be perceived from a detached viewpoint, in which the self can look down on its own body, as in out-of-the-body travel. [Crucial to understanding the accounts of such experiences is separating the elements of the experience from the interpretation placed upon it by the person who has had the experience.]

Psychologists and doctors who have studied near-death experiences have also examined reports of out-of-the-body experiences, and have found enough commonalities to suggest that they are varieties of the same experience, the near-death experience often being distinguished by its intensity, its vividness, and its impact upon the person having the experience. For example, tunnel experiences are common to both, and as is the experience of viewing the physical body from a perspective outside of it. Many individuals find that such experiences are a powerful vindication of religious beliefs such as the existence of a soul as a separate entity from the body and the possibility of the continuation of the soul beyond the experience of bodily death. Clergy who undergo the experience are likely to change their views and teachings.

Various mundane theories have been offered to account for near-death and out-of-the-body experiences in terms of hallucination. For example, the tunnel sensations might be a reliving of the powerful experience of passing through the birth canal, since the baby usually emerges head first. Another psychological explanation centers upon the behavior of cells in the visual cortex when the brain is hyperactive through lack of oxygen. For a thoughtful examination of psychological theories, see the 1989 article, "Down the Tunnel" by Susan Blackmore. Blackmore has studied out-of-body experiences as a psychological phenomenon, but unlike most psychologists who theorize about such experiences, she has actually had such an experience herself. She rightly draws attention to the fact that skeptical explanations ignore the intense insightful and spiritual aspects of such experiences.

Investigators from different disciplines will emphasize their own bias. Allan Kellehear, who comes from a sociological perspective, compares the experience to crisis situations that happen to those lost at sea or trapped in a mine. Melvin Morse is a pioneer working with children who have NDEs and he finds that experiencers in this group to be contaminated by the life experiences that adults have accumulated.

Since 1981, research on the near-death experience has been focused by the International Association for Near-Death Studies founded in 1981 and headed by Kenneth Ring. It published a monumental study of the phenomenon in 1980 and has an active presence on the web. Whether the phenomenon is completely understood or not it has become increasingly important because half the recipients of medical procedures are likely to have a near-death experience.

Sources:

Atwater, P. M. H. Coming Back to Life: The After Effects of the Near-death Experience. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1988.

Blackmore, Susan J. Beyond the Body. London: Heinemann, 1982.

——. "Down the Tunnel." British and Irish Skeptic 3, no. 3 (May/June 1989).

——. Dying to live: Near-death experiences. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993.

Crookall, Robert. Out-of-the-Body Experiences: A Fourth Analysis. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1970.

——. The Techniques of Astral Projection: Denouement After Fifty Years. London: Aquarian Press, 1964.

Gallup, George, Jr., with William Proctor. Adventures in Immortality. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. London: Souvenir Press, 1983.

Greyson, Bruce. "The Near-Death Experience as a Focus of Clinical Attention." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 185, no. 5 (May 1997).

Groth-Marnat, G. and J. Schumaker. "The Near-Death Experience: A Review and Critique." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 29, no. 1 (January 1989).

International Association for Near-Death Studies. http://www.iands.org. April 10, 2000.

Kellehear, Allan. Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine and Religion. New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1996.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: MacMillan, 1969.

Moody, Raymond. Life After Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.

Morse, Melvin. Closer to the Light. New York: Villard, 1990.

Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. http://www.neardeath.com. April 10, 2000.

Ring, Kenneth. Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. New York: William Morrow, 1980.

——, and Evelyn E. Valarino. Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience. New York: Insight Books/Plenum Press, 1998.

SpiritWeb: NDE, Near Death Experiences. http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/nde.html. April 10, 2000.

Wilson, Ian. The After Death Experience. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987.

Zaleski, Carol G. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experiences in Medieval and Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.