Near death experiences

One study found that 8 to 12 percent of 344 patients resuscitated after suffering cardiac arrest had NDEs and about 18% remembered some part of what happened when they were clinically dead.

A wide array of experiences reported by some people who have nearly died or who have thought they were going to die. There is no single shared experience reported by those who have had NDEs. Even the experiences of most interest to parapsychologists--such as the "mystical experience", the "light at the end of the tunnel" experience, the "life review" experience, and the out-of-body experience-rarely occur together in near-death experiences. However, the term NDE is most often used to refer to an OBE occurring while near death.

Two M.D.s who have popularized the idea that the NDE is proof of life after death are Elizabeth Kobler-Ross and Raymond Moody. The former is well known for her work on death and dying. The latter has written several books on the subject of life after life, and has comprised a list of features he considers to be typical of the near-death experience. According to Moody, the typical NDE includes a buzzing or ringing noise, a sense of blissful peace, a feeling of floating out of one's body and observing it from above, moving through a tunnel into a bright light, meeting dead people, saints, Christ, angels, etc.; seeing one's life pass before one's eyes; and finding it all so wonderful that one doesn't want to return to one's body. This composite experience is based on interpretations of testimonials and anecdotes from doctors, nurses, and patients. Characteristic of Moody's work is the glaring omission of cases that don't fit his hypothesis. If Moody is to be believed, no one near death has had a horrifying experience.

There are numerous reports of bad NDE trips involving tortures by elves, giants, demons, etc. Some parapsychologists take these good and bad NDE trips as evidence of heaven and hell. They believe that some souls actually leave their bodies and go to the other world for a time before returning to their bodies. If so, then what is one to conclude from the fact that most people near death do not experience either the heavenly or the diabolical? Is that fact good evidence that there is no afterlife or that most people end up in some sort of limbo? Such reasoning is on par with supposing that dreams in which one appears to oneself to be outside of one's bed are to be taken as evidence of the soul or mind actually leaving the body during sleep.

What little research there has been in this field indicates that the experiences Moody lists as typical of the NDE may be due to brain states triggered by cardiac arrest and anesthesia (Blackmore 1993). Furthermore, many people who have not been near death have had experiences that seem identical to NDEs. These mimicking experiences are often the result of psychosis (due to severe neurochemcial imbalance) or drug usage, such as hashish, LSD, or DMT.

Moody thinks that NDEs prove the existence of life after death. Skeptics believe that NDEs can be explained by neurochemistry and are the result of brain states that occur due to a dying, demented or drugged brain. For example, neural noise and retino-cortical mapping explain the common experience of passage down a tunnel from darkness into a bright light. According to Susan Blackmore, vision researcher Dr. Tomasz S. Troscianko of the University of Bristol speculated:

If you started with very little neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells were firing fast, the whole area would appear light.

Blackmore attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness of the NDE to the release of endorphins in response to the extreme stress of the situation. The buzzing or ringing sound is attributed to cerebral anoxia and consequent effects upon the connections between brain cells.

Dr. Karl Jansen has reproduced NDEs with ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, dissociative anaesthetic.

The anaesthesia is the result of the patient being so 'dissociated' and 'removed from their body' that it is possible to carry out surgical procedures. This is wholly different from the 'unconsciousness' produced by conventional anesthetics, although ketamine is also an excellent analgesic (pain killer) by a different route (i.e. not due to dissociation). Ketamine is related to phencyclidine (PCP). Both drugs are arylcyclohexylamines - they are not opioids and are not related to LSD. In contrast to PCP, ketamine is relatively safe, is much shorter acting, is an uncontrolled drug in most countries, and remains in use as an anaesthetic for children in industrialised countries and all ages in the third world as it is cheap and easy to use. Anaesthetists prevent patients from having NDE's ('emergence phenomena') by the co-administration of sedatives which produce 'true' unconsciousness rather than dissociation.

According to Dr. Jansen, ketamine can reproduce all the main features of the NDE, including travel through a dark tunnel into the light, the feeling that one is dead, communing with God, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, strange noises, etc. This does not prove that there is no life after death, but it does prove that an NDE is not proof of an afterlife.

While neural activity might explain bright lights, buzzing noises, and hallucinations, there are some aspects of some NDEs that still remain puzzling. Some people who are thought to be dead, but are actually just unconscious, recover and remember things like looking down and seeing their own bodies being worked on by doctors and nurses. They recall conversations being held while they were "dead." Of course, they weren't dead at all, but they feel as if their mind or soul had left their body and was observing it from above. Those who have had such experiences--and they are many--often find them life-altering and defining moments. They are convinced such experiences are proof of life after death by a disembodied consciousness. But are they? It is possible that a person may appear dead to our senses or our scientific equipment but still be perceiving. The visual and auditory perceptions occurring while unconscious-but-perceiving may be produced by a variety of neuronal mechanisms. It is possible that the soul leaves the body, but it is not necessary to posit a soul to explain these experiences.

Raymond Quigg Lawrence (Blinded by the Light) thinks that NDEs are the work of Satan. Perhaps. Or, they may be telepathic communications from doctors, nurses, or others in attendance when the subject is near death. Or, they may be mixed memories composed after waking up and hearing others talk about what was happening while one was near death. Or, they may be recollections of subconsciously recorded data overheard while in a groggy state. At this point in our knowledge, to claim that NDEs provide proof that the soul exists independently of the body seems very premature.