Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (5 page)

Any one of these lines of evidence on its own strongly suggests an afterlife. However, I consider the combination of these nine lines of evidence to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of an afterlife. That is certainly a bold statement but one I am compelled to make after years of painstaking research.

An important NDERF survey question asks 613 NDErs what they think of the reality of their experience—how they viewed the reality of their experience shortly after its occurrence and also at the time they completed the survey. In response, 95.8 percent believed at the time of completing the survey that their NDE was definitely real. Not one NDEr said that the experience they had was “definitely not real.”

And then there is the spiritual content of NDEs, namely answers to such age-old questions as: Why are we here on earth? What is important about our earthly existence? Is there an afterlife? Now that I have reviewed thousands of NDE case studies, I can say that the content of NDEs has substantial consistency in these answers. I would emphasize that this consistency tells us that something real is taking place in these NDEs. This remarkable consistency of spiritual messages suggests something extremely important, not only for the person near death, but for all of us.

The true strength of the NDERF study has been the sheer number of case studies we have examined and the consistency of results. From this volume and the consistency of their content and message, I believe we have some answers to humankind’s most perplexing question: What happens when we die?

But that is my belief. The results of our groundbreaking research are presented in the following chapters. You be the judge.

Speaking both medically and logically, it is not possible to have a highly lucid experience while unconscious or clinically dead.

After all, being clinically dead means no longer having the perceptions or senses of a living person. If this statement is indeed true, then how do you explain events like the ones in the following three NDEs? In each of these events—cardiac arrest, brain hemorrhage, and a shooting—the person had a very lucid experience, which defies the fact that she or he was unconscious and near death.

This first story is from a physician who worked feverishly to revive an elderly patient. As you can see in his account below, the patient appreciated the doctor’s work from a ringside seat:

After twenty-eight shocks (I think), I got her back. She was technically without a cardiac rhythm of her own for 1.5 hours…. That night I went to the ICU and asked the elderly patient if she “remembered anything.”

“Yes,” she said, “I was in the corner of the room—floating—and saw you working on me. You shocked me, and I was dead. I saw a massively white bright light, and there were two angels there … telling me it wasn’t my time and to go back. But I didn’t want to.”

This patient had a brain hemorrhage that dropped him to the ground. He said he could see “360 degrees” around his body. Before long, he had a profound sense of being dead, which wasn’t a bad thing, by his account:

When I realized I was dead, which took several minutes, a great warmth of love engulfed me, and I felt arms wrap around me even though I had no physical form; colors were electric, smells fantastic…. I was also aware of the overpowering secret to life in its truly simple form and felt and believed that nothing else is real but the feeling. The experience of death has been the most real and physical experience of my life, and the world here felt cold and heavy and unreal for sometime afterward.

This patient was in a coma for three days, during which time he was visited by friends and family members. Still, he insisted he was out of body for the entire time and could hear and see what people in his room were doing. In one case he proved it. A woman had brought a lavender candle to the hospital and placed it in the drawer near his bed. When he came out of the coma, he knew which drawer the candle was in.

Not to go too far a field here, but the man also had prophetic dreams of a personal and worldwide nature. Not only did he “see” a relationship in his future as well as events in his child’s future, but he also “saw” a world economic downturn and a nuclear explosion in North Korea.

Another example of lucid death comes from Michelle, who was shot by her boyfriend near Boston. She was in the process of breaking up with her beau and was in his basement apartment when she heard a loud blast and felt a hot, piercing pain in the back of her neck. As her mouth filled with blood, the boyfriend grabbed Michelle and said, “What have I done?”

She left her body, and from a spot in the corner of the room she watched as firefighters and police officers stepped around her body as they tried to figure out exactly what to do. The boyfriend’s brother began to cry, and as he did he threw up on a police officer, which was a sight that made her laugh. It was then that she had this revelation about death:

I felt so blissful and whole … full of the most love I had ever experienced. I thought to myself, “If this is dying, then it’s not as bad as everyone thinks it is.” Then I saw a light from above me. It was pulling me away from the room. I figured it was okay to just let this happen, to go with the flow and accept whatever was to be. The light was getting brighter, engulfing my body.… Body? I had no body. It stayed back down in that damp room. I realized that I was dead physically but mentally I was still alive. My soul was now my “body.” I looked up into the light. I could see someone beckoning me to come. He was there at the end of this lit tunnel. Then I heard a voice. It was a man’s voice. He asked me if I was ready. I felt so good. It was so easy.

Millions of NDEs like these happen worldwide every year to people who are unconscious and may be clinically dead with a loss of breathing and heartbeat. Yet they are still having highly lucid experiences at the time of death, experiences that are clear, logical, and well structured.

Even more remarkable is an NDERF research finding that consciousness and alertness is usually
greater
during the NDE than everyday consciousness and alertness!

The NDERF survey asked, “How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal, everyday consciousness and alertness?” Of 613 NDErs surveyed, 74.4 percent indicated they had “More consciousness and alertness than normal”; 19.9 percent experienced “Normal consciousness and alertness”; and only 5.7 percent had “Less consciousness and alertness than normal.”

The concept of a higher level of consciousness and alertness is subjective, so the NDERF survey asks NDErs to explain this sensation in their own words. NDErs were asked, “If your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience was different from your normal everyday consciousness and alertness, please explain.” Hundreds of NDErs responded to this question, and here are some representative responses.

A woman who was struck by a car wrote,

It was only different in the sense that it was another space and another perception of being…. I believe there was an all- around awareness that didn’t require thought in the way that our minds—brains, rather—are programmed and designed to register them. This is beyond light speed, if you will.

A man whose pulse and breathing stopped experienced the following:

During the entire incident, I felt as though I had never been more alert. My mind was fast, even though physically I was unconscious.

Responses like these suggest that consciousness continues after death. To understand how remarkable it is to have a conscious experience at the time of clinical death, it is helpful to understand what happens at the moment of death. Many NDEs are associated with a cardiac arrest, which means the heart stops beating.
¹
Among those having a cardiac arrest, about 10 to 20 percent will have a near-death experience.
²
At the time of a life-threatening event, it cannot be predicted who will have a near-death experience and who will not.

As discussed in chapter 2, when the heart stops beating, blood immediately stops flowing to the brain. Approximately ten to twenty seconds after blood stops flowing to the brain, the electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain electrical activity, goes flat. The EEG measures electrical activity in the cortex, or outer part of the brain, which is responsible for conscious thought. Following cardiac arrest a lucid, organized, and conscious experience should be impossible.

With a flat EEG, it is still possible for electrical activity to be present in the lower parts of the brain, such as the brain stem. There is no chance that electrical activity in these lower parts of the brain could account for such a highly lucid and ordered experience as described by NDErs.

Lucidity coupled with the predictable order of elements establishes that NDEs are not dreams or hallucinations, nor are they due to any other causes of impaired brain functioning.

The first version of the NDERF survey asked, “Was the experience dreamlike in any way?” and allowed only a narrative answer. The response to this question was generally an adamant
no!
This indicates that NDErs were not having dreams. This finding is especially significant given that the wording of the question encouraged a positive response if
any
part of the NDE was dreamlike.

The lucidity of the near-death experience becomes apparent when we look at descriptions of vision during NDEs. In the many hundreds of NDE case studies I have reviewed, descriptions of vision are often so dramatic that I must remind myself that the NDErs are generally unconscious and often clinically dead at the time they are experiencing extraordinary vision. Colors are often described as unworldly in their variety and beauty. Once again, I am showing several random examples from the NDERF case studies to illustrate the lucidity of vision in NDEs.

A man who experienced three near-death experiences wrote,

The colors on the other side are the brightest colors; our most fluorescent colors on this earth are muddy [compared] to the brightness and vividness of the colors that are in Heaven.

A woman who suffered a heart attack and stroke reported,

I wanted to see color again, and when I did it was fantastic! I saw colors I could never explain. A shade of red that I will never forget.

A woman who was unresponsive after a motorcycle accident said,

I was taken to a beautiful meadow with the most gorgeous plant life and colors so vibrant that I’ve never seen anywhere; it was amazing!

Leading NDE researcher Dr. Greyson is seeing the same lucidity and higher level of consciousness in the NDEs he studies as I am seeing in the NDERF study. Dr. Greyson and his coresearchers say,

Near-death experiencers often describe their mental processes during the NDE as remarkably clear and lucid and their sensory experiences as unusually vivid, surpassing those of their normal waking state. An analysis of 520 cases in our collection showed that 80 percent of experiencers described their thinking during the NDE as “clearer than usual” or “as clear as usual.” Furthermore, in our collection, people reported enhanced mental functioning significantly more often when they were actually physiologically close to death than when they were not.
³

Vision during NDEs is usually different from earthly vision. An NDERF survey question asked, “Did your vision differ in any way from your normal, everyday vision (in any aspect, such as clarity, field of vision, colors, brightness, depth perception, degree of solidness/transparency of objects, etc.)?” Of the 613 NDErs responding, 66.1 percent answered “Yes,” 15.0 percent answered “Uncertain,” and only 18.9 percent answered “No.” Hundreds of NDErs then provided a narrative explanation of how vision during their NDEs differed from earthly vision. Review of these narratives reveals that many NDErs describe vision as unworldly in its brightness, clarity, and vividness. Very few NDErs described their NDE vision as diminished in comparison to their earthly vision.

Many NDErs indicate they have 360-degree vision during their experience, sometimes even more than that. The term
360 degrees
refers to two dimensions only, while NDErs often report spherical, three-dimensional visual awareness simultaneously in all directions—forward, backward, right, left, above, and below.

For example, a child we’ll call Ray was horsing around on a school playground. His friend wanted to show him a new judo throw. Ray was thrown and was knocked senseless when he landed on his head. He could see simultaneously in all directions. As he recounted the event,

I still had a “body,” but it was entirely different. I could see in three dimensions as if I had no body at all but was just a floating eyeball, for lack of a better explanation. I could see all directions at once, yet there were no directions or dimensions as we think of them.

People who have had near-death experiences often describe enhanced and even supernormal vision. This is powerful evidence that something other than the physical brain is responsible for vision during NDEs. We will explore this concept further in chapter 5 when we examine visual NDEs in the blind, including those blind from birth.

The sense of hearing during a near-death experience may be different from everyday hearing, but to a lesser degree than noted with vision. The NDERF survey asked NDErs, “Did your hearing differ in any way from your normal, everyday hearing (in any aspect, such as clarity, ability to recognize source of sound, pitch, loudness, etc.)?” To this question 46.0 percent of NDErs answered “Yes,” 22.2 percent answered “Uncertain,” and 31.8 percent answered “No.” Many went on to describe what they meant.

One such description came from Mark, a young man who was found to have an obstructed artery in his heart. The cardiologist tried to insert a device called a stent into the artery, but a complication developed requiring emergency surgery. While recovering from surgery, Mark’s weakened heart stopped.

As the doctors worked feverishly to bring him back, Mark took a journey down “the most beautiful road I have ever seen,” one that took him through a mountain paradise. As he took a walk through this heavenly place, Mark began to hear a voice that seemed to be “from nowhere, yet everywhere.”

“Mark!- You must go back!.”

“Go back? No! No! I can’t go back!.”

Again the voice said, “You must return; I have given you [a] task; you have not finished.”

“No, no, please, God, no! Let me stay.”

With lightning speed, I was naked moving backward through the darkest of darkness. There were lightning bolts all about me, from my feet to the top of my head. Enormous lightning bolts! Going in all directions into the darkness. Despite the brightness of the lightning, the light from it did not penetrate the awful darkness.

Mark recovered. Later, when he described his experience for the NDERF website, Mark indicated that of all the sensory events of that day, one that stood out was the unique clarity of the sound. As Mark said:

All sound was incredibly clear. The voice of the Supreme Being seemed to emanate from nowhere but at the same time from everywhere. Words did not come from the mouths of beings, but from the aura around them.

Here are some other descriptions from NDErs that emphasize the quality of sound during their NDEs:

[I heard] sound, and it wasn’t like the sound we hear in our ears. It didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere; it was just there. It did not seem to be there because of vibration or wind or anything. I can’t describe it.

Clearer and crisper, as if in a chamber of silence listening to whispers.

Superclear. I am slightly hard of hearing. During that time I could hear everything. Superhearing would be a better term.