Heightened sensations in near-death experiences

In addition to their thoughts being faster and clearer than usual, many experiencers also report that their senses, like vision and hearing, were more vivid than usual. Jayne Smith had an NDE at age twenty-three during a bad reaction to anesthesia during childbirth. She described for me her senses during that experience: “I found myself in a meadow, mind cleared, identity intact, and once more aware of having a body. And this was a beautiful green meadow with beautiful flowers, beautiful colors, lit again with this glorious, radiant light, like no light we’ve ever seen, but there was sky, grass, flowers that had colors that I’d never seen before. And I remember so well looking at them and thinking, ‘I have never seen some of these colors!’ And wonder of wonders, I realized I was seeing the inner light of all the growing things, just utter glory in color. It was not reflected light, but a gentle, inner glow that shone from each and every plant. Overhead, the sky was clear and blue, the light infinitely more beautiful than any light we know.”

Gregg Nome, who drowned when his inner tube capsized going over a waterfall, described for me the remarkable heightening of his senses: “Suddenly, I could hear and see as never before. The sound of the waterfall was just so crisp and clear that it really is indescribable. Two years before this, my right ear had been injured when somebody threw a large, powerful firecracker into a bar where I was listening to a band, and it exploded right next to my head. But now, in my NDE, I could hear perfectly clearly. And my sight was even more beautiful. I felt as if I had been limited by my physical senses for all these years. Sights that were very far away from me were as clear as sights that were very close, and this was at the same time. There was no blurriness in my vision whatsoever.” Gregg found not only his vision more vivid than usual but his damaged hearing restored and all his physical senses heightened. Two-thirds of the experiencers in my research reported extraordinarily vivid sensations in their NDEs.

Greyson, Bruce. After (pp. 34-35). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.