NDEs and the Afterlife

Throughout history, mysteries of the unknown have been heard, seen and spoken about. There are various theories and explanations to help us understand where we came from, why we're here, and what life is all about.

However, there is one question that remains and has always remained unanswered: what is it like to die?

Recent studies have been looking into the hows and whys of near-death experiences (NDE). An NDE is defined as an event usually triggered by a life-threatening traumatic experience that has a significantly noticeable impact on the individual's outlook on life. NDE has been explained as an ‘out-of-body experience' (OBE) that is brought about when a person is at the point of death. This generally happens during accidents and acute illness.

A surprisingly large number of people have had an NDE - approximately 10% of those who almost die but don't have had one - and their accounts of the experience are sufficiently similar to have intrigued scientists. During NDEs, people cross over to the ‘other side' and after an NDE, most people develop a strong belief in life after death.

The NDE has been compared to a kind of spiritual awakening or a mystical experience.

At the onset of the NDE, the individual may experience a shock or surprise that they are physically dead, yet will remain peaceful and have no feelings of pain.

Following this serene awareness of physical death, the person may have an ‘out-of-body experience' (OBE), a perception of separating from the physical body and moving away from the deceased body.

The individual may experience an unusual auditory sensation (described as a ‘buzzing sound') as he or she leaves the physical body, and a sense of moving through a dark tunnel at great speed. As the individual passes through the tunnel, there may be an awareness of a bright light towards the end. While perceiving this light, individuals describe seeing ethereal forms.

In the later part of the near-death experience, the individual may sense that he or she is rising rapidly towards the light into what he or she may consider heaven or another plane of consciousness - a place between two places or worlds.

During this experience, the individual describes ‘meeting others'. The others that are met are usually dead relatives or dead friends. They may also describe encountering visible ‘spirits'-what some have referred to as ‘guardian spirits' or ‘spirit-helpers'.

In this encounter, individuals experiencing the NDE may become conscious of having a total panoramic review of their life pass before their eyes. Usually when people are asked to recount their experience, they realize that there are no words to describe ‘such things'.

Could there really be some existence after death? There have been theories speculating that all these individuals may be hallucinating, while others suggest that there is enough evidence out there to confirm that there is a real capability to be conscious outside our physical bodies.

Numerous people have related hearing or watching their doctors or other spectators pronounce them dead. Often they feel like they are another person in the room, watching the whole thing like a spectator, but being unable to feel anything associated with their own body. They witness confirmed, verifiably real events that take place in the physical world. People who have had an NDE say there is nothing hallucinatory or dream-like about the experience.

It is an unconventional area for scientific exploration, but after patients described the mysterious experiences and feelings taking place during a close brush with death, researchers and scientists knew they wanted to learn more.

NDEs and OBEs have long been considered outside the reach of mainstream science, restricted to the paranormal, the psychic, and the spiritual. But now researchers have pinpointed a site in the brain that may be responsible for these encounters.

A recent study conducted by a team of US scientists headed by Kevin Nelson found that people who had near-death experiences were more likely to have experienced ‘REM intrusion' - which includes experiences such as waking up and feeling unable to move, and hearing sounds just before and after sleep not heard by others.

Some scientists theorize that NDEs are produced by brain chemistry. Kevin Nelson states, "I see it as an activation of certain brain regions that are also active during the dream state."

Nelson, who published his findings in the journal Neurology, said the extreme fear or feeling of danger brought on by imminent death might trigger the brain mechanism that governs the transition between sleep and wakefulness, leading people to experience various dreamlike phenomena.

Professor Christopher French, who looks into paranormal experiences at Goldsmith College, London, seems to support the brain physiology theory. The ‘life review' can be caused by the brain firing in unusual ways as a result of a lack of oxygen or too much carbon dioxide in the blood stream. Endorphins released during times of stress can create a sense of peace, and the tunnel of light could reflect abnormal patterns of firing in the visual cortex, he states.

But, Dr. Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and the leading scientific authority in Britain concerning NDEs, believes that these theories fall far short of the facts.

"In the NDE, you are unconscious. One of the things we know about brain function in unconsciousness, is that you cannot create images and if you do, you cannot remember them...The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences [NDEs]...This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."

Studying the out-of-body phenomenon itself tends to disprove those theorists who attribute the near-death experience to purely physiological causes and gives credibility to those who say that near-death experiences are objective phenomena that occur independently of anything created by the person's mind. The knowledge that the experiencer gains during the ‘out-of-body experience', in most cases, could not have been learned in any other method other than by a consciousness detached from the physical body.

Mark H. Pritchard, author of the best selling book A Course in Astral Travel and Dreams, who writes with the name Belzebuub, has been studying out-of-body phenomena for over 15 years. He offers insights into the question of whether NDEs are simply a matter of brain physiology or a proof that consciousness exists independently of the physical body.

"Scientists are trying to find explanations but the current way of thinking brings us to a dead end."

"This is because of the methods they use to verify whether something is real or not. Their methods generally require that the scientist gets the evidence from phenomena that are external to the scientist and that the evidence is verifiable by others."

Mr. Pritchard states, "Obviously there's something else happening. It's important to look into this deeper. You will gain understanding in a real way because you're becoming the experiment yourself."

Mr. Pritchard is confident that only the individual - the experiencer - can truly determine whether there is life after death. If it is possible for your consciousness to exist outside of your body, then is it also possible that your consciousness may be able to survive physical death? According to Mr. Pritchard, you can prove it through an OBE.

Many people who have experienced a conscious OBE even once, strongly believe that there is life after death. Finding yourself outside the physical body and still functioning, still able to see, hear, touch, even smell and taste - how could anyone deny that life goes on? In most of these people's minds, there is no doubt.

Although there is much skepticism, scientists agree that there is much to learn and explore about this topic.

"I think it will be a long time before we fully understand the NDE," says Professor French, "but it's an incredibly fascinating and profound experience...Potentially they can tell us an awful lot, not only about how the brain may operate at the kind of extremes but also about normal everyday consciousness and so, definitely, we ought to carry on studying these experiences and taking them seriously."

"My work is spiritually neutral," Kevin Nelson says, noting the research can only look at how the brain contributes to near-death experiences, and not why the phenomenon occurs.

An Australian expert in the history and philosophy of psychology and psychiatry, Dr. Hans Pols of the University of Sydney, says scientists and others should not be too dismissive of things science cannot explain.

"The nature of human experience is far more diverse and interesting than scientists or psychologists or physicians are able to investigate given current knowledge," he says.

But the question is not, "Are near-death experiences real?" Even skeptics now concede that it is a real phenomenon. The question to ask is, "Are near-death experiences a phenomenon of a person's consciousness being outside of their body?" And if this can be proven true, then the next question is, "Can consciousness survive bodily death?"

If one is really interested in knowing whether there is life after death, then an OBE would seem to be a way to explore it. According to Mark H. Pritchard, "It is only verifiable to the person who actually does it...It remains for the individual to prove it for themselves."