Near-Death Experiences: 30 Years of Research

Epoch Times ^ | September 13, 2011 | Stephanie Lam

[NYer]

Bruce Greyson thinks that research has only scratched the surface of the near-death experience phenomenon, and that there is a great prospect for future studies. (Stephanie Lam/The Epoch Times)

DURHAM, N.C.—Grandma was just resuscitated. She wakes up and tells you a bizarre story of coming out of her body and going to heaven. Has she developed psychosis? Was her brain damaged from the lack of oxygen?

After over 30 years of research, scientists have concluded that this is not the case. Instead, they think that this phenomenon is something today’s science is yet to understand, and that it is an opportunity for the advancement of science.

The phenomenon was coined near-death experiences (NDEs) in the 1975 book “Life After Life” by Raymond Moody, M.D. and Ph.D. in philosophy and psychology. NDEs generally include cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental experiences.

Examples of NDEs include experiencing a change in one’s perception and way of thinking, feeling peace or calmness, gaining extrasensory perception (ESP), going through a review of one’s life and seeing the effects of one’s actions on others, a feeling of leaving the body, seeing deceased people and other beings such as angels, and feeling as if one has entered another dimension.Greyson believes that NDEs are an indication that the mind is independent of the brain because impaired brain functions would be expected during the clinical situation that the NDErs underwent, but his research found no corresponding impairment of mental functions in NDErs.

“In most cases, people’s mental functioning is better in the NDE than [it] is during our normal waking life,” Greyson said during an interview with The Epoch Times.

“Their thinking is faster, is clearer, is more logical, they have more control over their chain of thought, their senses are more acute, their memories are more vivid.

“If you ask somebody about their near-death experience that happened 15 years ago, they tell it as if it happened yesterday. If you ask them [about] other experiences from their life at the same time, they are very fuzzy memories, if they have any at all.

“[…] When you think that these experiences, which are characterized by enhanced thought processes [that] takes place when the brain is not functioning well or sometimes not functioning at all since it is in cardiac arrest or deep anesthesia—times when brain science would tell us that you shouldn’t be able to think or perceive or form memories—it becomes quite clear that we can’t explain this thing on the basis of brain physiology.”

Eben Alexander had a vivid near-death experience when his brain was severely damaged. (Stephanie Lam/The Epoch Times)

Eben Alexander, M.D., a neurosurgeon who also spoke at the conference, had an NDE that’s a case in point. He contracted acute bacterial meningitis, which damages the neocortex, in 2008 and went into a coma, spending six days on a ventilator.

The glucose level of his cerebrospinal fluid was 1 mg/dl (milligram per one-tenth of a liter), while normal levels are between 60 and 80 mg/dl. When the level drops to 20 mg/dl, the meningitis infection is considered severe. For days after the coma, Alexander struggled to speak and recall memories before the coma. No one with this kind of severe brain damage is expected to fully recover.

However, during his NDE, Alexander had such vivid experiences involving multiple senses, such as vision, hearing, and smell, that he said he couldn’t describe how amazing it was.

“My brain right now—I think it recovered pretty well—could not do anything close to what my brain was doing,” Alexander said. “How does a dying brain end up getting far, far more powerful and able to handle these tremendous loads of information instantaneously and put it altogether?”

Another phenomenon related to NDEs is shared death experiences, in which a person close to a dying person experiences something with the same characteristics as NDEs.

Moody first heard about shared death experiences in 1972 from a medical professor of his. The professor’s mother had a cardiac attack, and when she was trying to resuscitate her mother, she felt herself leaving her body and saw her body resuscitating her mother. As her mother died, she saw her mother in spirit form, and the spirit met some beings, some of whom she could recognize as people whom her mother had known. Then, her mother and the other people were sucked into a tunnel.

After over 30 years of research, Moody estimates that shared death experiences are as common as NDEs. As he studied more of these cases over the years, he found that the features of shared death experiences are similar to those of NDEs.

One of the most common features of shared death experiences is that the shared death experiencer sees the spirit of the dying person, which appears as a transparent replica of the person, or an oval or sphere of light leaving from the head or chest of the dying person’s physical body, Moody told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Sometimes, the bystander would also experience the life review of the dying person. A woman in Georgia was documented as having talked with her husband’s spirit as she saw his life review when he was dying, and she also saw a being that identified herself as the miscarried daughter she and her husband had lost.

Moody thinks that shared death experiences act as strong evidence for the view that the mind exists independently of the brain, because the people experiencing them are in no way having impaired brain functions at the time.

“All of the features that I identify as the initial near-death experiences that I studied years ago are also present in people who have these experiences at the bedside, who incidentally are not ill or injured,” Moody said during his presentation at the conference.

“There’s nothing wrong with the oxygen flow to their brains, and yet they have identically the same experiences that I hear from people who did come close to death.”

[EGPWS]

After an aortic dissection and 8 hours on ice with a body temp of 65 degree’s while it was repaired to save my life, I guess I am damned because there were no lights, nothing and after 8 hours it was like one seconds time for semi-comfortable to trying to pull a respirator away from me post-op in the dark.

[corlorde]

I posted something similar to this on another Website, but I know when I was dying in the ER, I don’t remember seeing any lights, dead relatives, nor do I recall floating above myself. I remember dark, blackness, and quiet. Maybe when people say hell is the absence of God, that is what they mean.

[True Republican Patriot]

Amazing and TRUE!! When You come back, You see a beauty and Amazement in Life that can only be created by the Supreme Artist and Creator of Our Infinite Universe of Beauty!
Our Loving and All Powerful GOD!

[Vermont Lt]

I know a man in his eighties that had one of these when he was about eight. He is still clear minded, but he describes this experience with a clarity that matches this story. I don’t know what it was, but something happened.

[ilovesarah2012]

Shortly before my grandmother passed away at 100, she was in the hospital bed and talking to her siblings who had passed away before her. I believe they were welcoming her home.

[True Republican Patriot]

Clintoon remembers black ugly vermin crawlin all over him during his heart failure! I usually don’t believe a word this Criminal says, but on this quote from Clintoon, I totally believe his words 1000%!

[ozarkgirl]

After 3 heart attacks, dad had an “electrical malfunction” of his heart and was declared dead, even to the point where his fingers were curling indicating that if they were able to resuscitate, he would probably suffer brain damage.

They did resuscitate, he did not have brain damage and he remembers nothing of the incident. We asked.

I wish he could have told us wonderful stories of how he almost made it to heaven but he remembered nothing.

[Big_Harry]

“I remember dark, blackness, and quiet. Maybe when people say hell is the absence of God, that is what they mean.”

That would scare the crap out of me. How have you dealt with it since?

[djf]

Over the years, I have been interested in things of this sort, and have read/listened to many interviews on the subject.

One very telling thing is that more than once, actually more than twice, I’m not sure how many times, I’ve heard people who actually work in the medical profession say something like “It’s just an unspoken subject. Everybody knows something happens when people die, sometimes they will see the spirit leaving the body, other things happen. But we just do not talk about it.”

And a couple times I heard things like this, it wasn’t the guy who comes and empties the trash cans, it was highly trained and experienced cardiac surgeons and anesthesiologists, that sort of thing.

Who knows? I had a kind of traumatic experience when my wife passed that has haunted me to this day...

[katykelly]

I have not heard that ... hmmm .

[Josephat]

Many moons ago, while in college, I wrote a paper about NDE’s and have had a keen interest since. For thirty plus years I hoped to meet someone who had experienced it. On the day of my mom’s funeral a stranger approached and said,”I just want to tell you,from personal experience, your mom is in the most beautiful and loving place you could imagine.”. I was blown away and related the story to the priest. He replied, “Not everyone has the same experience, some have black monsters chasing them”. My guess is that he may meet the monsters.

[Revolting cat!]

What about After Death Experiences?

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

There is a strong cultural component to these reports. For example, in the nineteenth century one crossed a river. Stonewall Jackson's last words were, "come let us cross over the river and sit under the shade of the trees." One crossed "The Jordan.

In India it is reported that the person arrives in front of a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk who then asks the "decedent" "Why are you here?" "There has been a mistake in the paperwork and you must go back."

It is reported that in the Middle Ages the "decedent" was examined in a hostile non-therapeutic fashion.

Wyatt Earps brother immediately prior to his death said to Wyatt; "remember what we were talking about the other day(crossing over)I don't see anything!"

I know a woman who was "Killed" in an accident, her heart was not functioning, no breathing in essence dead. She woke up two days later and reported no out of body, no tunnel of light, no warm fuzzy interrogators, no relatives. As she said "Just blackness!"

In conclusion, these reports are interesting but are not evidence of an after life. Sorry!

[PoloSec]

I learned one thing from my near death experience.

Either your dead or you ain’t!

[EGPWS]

They did resuscitate, he did not have brain damage and he remembers nothing of the incident. We asked.

Yeah, I was told the same after surgery, however they did say that I lost a kidney and almost lost several other organs and it took 2 "kerchunks" to get the ticker going again....no difference was noted with my brain however. ; )

[JRandomFreeper]

I just had a sense of great peace. No fear, no specific memories, just a sense of peacefulness.

/johnny

[madmominct]

My late husband had an NDE when he was first diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease back in the early 70s. He was on the operating table having a splenectomy when his heart stopped. He said he felt himself out of his body, at the top of the room, looking down on the doctors trying to resuscitate him. He said he felt completely peaceful and good - and could sense his grandfather’s presence near him. He was nothing like a “true believer” and I believed him. I’ve since been comforted by reading accounts of NDEs. I know it’s not particularly Biblical, but there does seem to be something going on. And I’ve read in many of these people recognize it’s Christ they’re seeing as “the Light” and feeling a great enveloping love from it. I find this very comforting!

[RnMomof7]

Maybe when people say hell is the absence of God, that is what they mean.

Not likely... because God is in Hell.. He is omnipresent

[Twinkie]

My mother had a NDE about 12 yrs. ago. Her heart stopped, and they used the electric “paddles” on her chest. She told me later that she was in “the prettiest place”. She had been a dedicated Christian all her life. - I never got a private moment alone with her from that day until she finally passed away two weeks later. My father was very distraught and required constant attention, nurses were coming in and out of the room, and there was just no opportunity to talk with her and ask in more detail what she saw.