A near-death experience (NDE) is an experience where a person dies and their consciousness continues to exist outside their body. It’s not a pre-death experience or a post-revival one, but it takes place at the time when the body is actually dead, and that means brain dead with no signs of life whatsoever.
NDEs are quite common, and exist in all cultures around the world and happen to people of all ages. Statistically around one in ten or one in nine people who die and revive have a NDE. A survey released in 1982 in the United States, showed that eight million Americans claimed to have experienced a NDE. Accounts are given from children as young as three.
With conscious psychological activity present in the absence of brain function, NDEs show that consciousness can exist outside brain function.
The Experience
Many people say they are conscious of being outside their body and experience floating out of the body and seeing what is happening around them. Many recall going through a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it, seeing pleasant landscapes, being in a spiritual place and meeting deceased relatives, pets, or spiritual figures.
In many cases they remember going through a review of their lives that gives them some understanding. Some say they meet a barrier which they see as the point of no return and many are aware of a decision being taken to return to earth.
Some see beings as soon as they come out of the body.
In a small but significant number of cases, the experience is an unpleasant one, even hellish.
These experiences are common throughout different cultures in the world, although there are differences in the details.
Some of the experiences are geared towards the individual, to what they understand of spirituality and their life experience. But overall it is not a learnt cultural experience in itself.
Additionally, there are many cases of friends or relatives sensing the presence of a person who had just died as though they were trying to contact them.
It's common for people to have difficulty in explaining the experience to others and a high proportion return from the experience with a belief in reincarnation.
NDEs and Brain Activity
NDEs cannot simply be functions of the brain, or its response to life threatening situations (which could be described as a kind of a dream or hallucination), as they occur with the death of the body. Therefore, the same kinds of biological criteria that apply to explanations of dreaming, such as the effects of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) dreaming (the time when dreams are most easily recalled), sleep paralysis, etc., do not apply to NDEs.
Some features, such as being outside the body, are common to both NDE and dream experiences; however, the actual state of the body is completely different: one being alive and the other being dead. If the body has not died, it is not a true near-death experience.
People who recall near-death experiences may have, statistically, a greater success in recalling dreams. But that is due to the ability to recall out-of-body experiences in general, rather than near-death experiences being simply a dream before death.
REM sleep requires specific brain and bodily activity, all of which are absent with death. In any case, these kinds of measurements only measure the physical body; they do not measure what a person actually experiences while outside of the body. And, NDEs by their very nature, deserve to be studied in a different way than by purely biological standards.
The theory that NDEs occur in the time just before and just after brain death, cannot account for the fact that many accounts happen with the experience taking place during the time of death (with no brain activity) in which the subject sees events taking place in real life, the exact timing of which can be corroborated by those present at the event.
Some scientists have monitored traces of electrical activity in the brain in patients who were having a NDE. Their findings suggested that it was not the case that NDEs occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness.
In the case of heart failure, the consensus is that consciousness is lost within 8 seconds. After 11 there is no measurable brain activity, and within 18 seconds the brain ceases to function at all. For there to be any kind of consciousness whatsoever at this time, would be impossible.
Still, many scientists, lacking an alternative solution, claim that the experiences are due to biological phenomena, which is clearly not the case. Accounts of NDEs describe events taking place accurately around them while their brain waves were flat.
No explanations about the biological process of the death of the brain can explain experiences like this.
Out-of-Body Experiences in NDEs
Many people who have had near-death experiences recall being above their body and looking down over it, and a significant number of these do recall the actual events that took place at this time with accuracy, moreover, from a high viewpoint.
This would be impossible if NDEs were simply dream-state intrusion, the release of chemicals and hormones, or were due to brain dysfunction from a lack of oxygen or blood supply to the brain, as these phenomena are taking place inside the limits of the brain, whereas a near-death experience is taking place while the brain is down and is outside of the brain.
What we perceive of the world is dependent upon the ‘equipment’ we have for perceiving it. That OBEs occur with activation of certain areas of the brain is the case, as the physical body is a tool or vehicle for consciousness, in a similar way that the eyes and all related bodily processes are tools that are involved in seeing. But to understand NDEs, we must understand what it is that is in the body and uses it and which leaves the body at its death.
If they were created by the brain, NDEs would not take place in the absence of life in the brain. The fact that people who experience them can recall events taking place in the spot where they died and that these events have taken place at the time their body showed no signs of life, are clear indications that they are real.
There are many cases of people seeing things when their body had died, which would have been impossible had their consciousness not been separated from their bodies. A good example of this is the case of a woman in intensive care who had a NDE: she came out of her body, went to the roof of the hospital and saw a red shoe. Staff went to the roof and retrieved the shoe. It would have been impossible to have seen that shoe from ground level, as due to its positioning, it was only observable from above the roof.
In another instance, a man dies on the operating table and sees his wife in the other room wearing red clothes. Upon resuscitation, he finds that his wife actually did wear red clothes. There are many, many more similar cases. There are even cases of blind people being able to see for the first time while out of their body in a NDE.
Science and NDEs
Some academics, scientists and medical practitioners are, in the light of compelling accounts by patients, looking for new scientific and theoretical ways to understand the NDE phenomena.
Broadly, they concur that NDEs suggest that consciousness can exist independently of brain function and that there is no convincing medical explanation for OBEs.
This is significant because it indicates a willingness to study outside the traditional mindset. However, there are limitations to this academic approach, as the step from studying data and accounts to studying OBEs using personal experience, has not effectively been made. And, unless research is taken in this direction, it is difficult to see that any substantial progress will be made for conventional science.
Science is a long way from explaining NDEs, and, unless scientists tackle such things with plausible explanations, many members of
the public will continue to be unconvinced by their explanations of the processes of brain death and/or recovery, being the cause of NDEs.
The problem that any biological study faces is that it does not study the actual experience firsthand. If someone does actually leave their body, they are by definition out of it, so studying the body that is left behind will not tell us much if anything, about what the person is actually going through, or where that person is.
Therefore the study of out-of-body experiences requires actually having them for it to be thorough. Now that poses problems for scientists who only study biological phenomena, as they are confined to the three-dimensional world and have only biological phenomena and accounts of the travellers to use.
In fact it requires a radical shift in scientific methodology and, judging by the entrenchment of ideas in the scientific community, I do not see that shift happening, which puts the current research on a par with Medieval Age researchers who would consider no other opinion on the shape of the world, other than that it is flat.
The fact is that scientists do not know what consciousness is and have no theories to explain its nature. Today’s science is the science of the external world - it does not know the inner science of Gnosis and is unable to effectively come to grips with personal experience or with consciousness.
With death, the body is obviously not suitable for the manifestation of consciousness in the world. A consciousness that exists outside of it would then be moving somewhere else, and it has to move as nothing is static in life - everything is in motion in one way or another.
The fact that people can acquire information when they are brain-dead and out of their body, shows that consciousness is separate from the brain. Most scientists today believe that consciousness is entirely dependent on brain activity; however, they cannot explain how it exists in the absence of brain activity (as considerable evidence shows that it does), and therefore, their theories are not credible.
So the individual, searching for some light about all this, cannot rely upon conventional science to provide the answers - a lifetime’s wait is unlikely to provide much if any insight, as scientific methodology is flawed in this respect.
The way to get the knowledge is by personal experience, to go to the same place as the dead go, without dying of course, and that is done through out-of-body experiences.
Out-of-Body Experiences
NDEs are out-of-body experiences; they occur for different reasons and are usually different in their nature due to the different circumstances of the subject.
Anyone can have an out-of-body experience; statistically about one in ten people have been aware of having at least one. It's possible to learn to have them and safely, since all we are doing is essentially falling asleep.
When conventional scientists try to explain the phenomena of out-of-body experiences by studying the body itself, they are simply measuring the biological effects of out-of-body experiences while in the dream or coma state. To understand these states, it is more appropriate and useful to study the nature of out-of-body experiences themselves, rather than simply looking at their biological effects. But for any individual, firsthand experience is essential.
If someone’s had an experience, then biologically it can’t be proven or disproved. But in many cases the individual who has had one knows what they have experienced, as it happened to them and they can recall all or some of it.
Dreams are an interesting subject in the study of NDEs, and OBEs and can be used as a step for their exploration. NDEs are generally clear, lucid experiences; dreams are usually not so. They are a type out-of-body experience, but they don’t usually contain an awareness of one’s true surroundings. Instead they contain the projections of the subconscious, which take the place of reality, as thoughts are a kind of matter that crystallises over there. We are then just in those projections, which are like daydreams that have come to life, without much or any self-awareness.
But if someone was to become aware that they were dreaming, it would be possible to come out of the illusory scenes of the subconscious and to be aware of being somewhere out of the body, just as a person in a NDE is.
Normal dreams are therefore occurring in the same place as NDEs, but without the lucidity. In out-of-body experiences, I’ve seen both dreamers and the deceased in that environment.
Any type of out-of-body experience changes someone's life and their perspective on it. Imagine what it would feel like to lie down and instead of sleeping, to feel yourself lifting up out of your body, to come out of it and to be in your room, facing the unknown. That kind of experience would cause most people to reassess their lives, and it opens up new questions as to the whys of it all, what’s really going on and how do I find out more?
Going Beyond an Account Based Study
There is enough account based evidence, corroborated with medical evidence of physical death given by the subject from the time of death, to say that NDEs are evidence of consciousness surviving beyond the life of the body.
This however, is a conclusion drawn from studying other people’s experiences and accounts, but it is not really knowing - it is second-hand or theoretical information. The person who has the NDE is the one who actually knows that they have had the experience. Knowing in this sense equates to personal experience. An academic study of accounts will bring no more than an opinion or theory about NDEs, as there is only so much you can learn about an experience in a dimension beyond this one, without actually going there. Therefore, the challenge is to go there out-of-the body.
In order to discover what I have about out-of-body experiences, I have had to research using myself – my own experience as the instrument - because all of these kinds of experiences have one thing in common: they all involve personal experience, most of which is simply unverifiable to conventional scientific methodology, but which is nevertheless perceived by the experiencer.
After all, how do we know that anything, even other people and the world around us is real? It is only our own personal experience that we have to stand on. Theoretically an individual could be just an experiment with a constructed reality which they perceive, and theoretically there is no way to disprove this.
If personal experience is not to be relied upon, then nothing can be, since everything in life is a personal experience of the beholder. But it is the objectivity of personal experience which is of greatest importance, and that requires a study of Gnosis, of self-knowledge, which is an inner science.
If we want to know what is real and what is subjective, we need to find the objective and the subjective within. How? There is an innate guide within us. If that guide were not present, there would be no foundation to daily living, just craziness.
That guide gives structure to our lives and to what we are, and it is consciousness. To understand consciousness requires a lot of study and personal experience.
If we try to find out whether OBEs and NDEs are real by looking at accounts, the best we can do is to draw our own conclusions, to form an opinion, but we will never really know whether they are real or not unless we experience one of sufficient quality. Just as the experience of researching about a particular country, reading about it or watching TV shows on it, is different from actually going there.
Both the study of OBEs and NDEs will only give convincing evidence at an individual level from personal experience: they will never be convincing from the study of third party accounts. All belief and theories have to measure up to new experience gained while being out of the body.
The importance of this subject becomes apparent if we consider how long we have lived and how long the death of the body will be for. Being sceptical, dismissive, believing or disbelieving in something, is avoiding the issue of knowing from experience. Avoiding the issue means that we will be a victim of circumstances and will have to put up with whatever happens. Believing in something is not knowing about it, as knowing requires personal experience. Again, we take a chance, and with so many interpretations of religious or symbolic teachings available, how can we be sure that a belief about this is correct? If we put our faith in conventional science, then we will have to conclude that either nothing exists after death, or, that we don’t know what happens after death. Again, it’s the same problem.
Therefore, considering the importance of the issue and the fact of death which is facing everyone, I think the sensible thing to do is to discover how to know, and if that does not come from one's own direct experience, it will have little value when facing death.
If however, we decide to look for answers through personal experience and discover that it is possible to exist outside the body, then it brings a whole new set of questions to the forefront as to the nature of life and existence itself, which has an enormous impact upon how we live our lives.
Belzebuub