NDEs under general anesthesia: Long excerpt #10

Radiation oncologist Jeremy Long writes in his article, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights" - "The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines general anesthesia as “anesthesia affecting the entire body and accompanied by loss of consciousness.” Cardiac arrest under anesthesia is generally well documented, as the heart function and breathing are carefully monitored during surgery while anesthesia is used. As previously discussed, a cardiac arrest produces unconsciousness and coma within seconds for people not under anesthesia. Remarkably, typical near-death experiences do happen following a cardiac arrest while under anesthesia. As an example, I previously published the NDE of Valerie, who was 17 years old when her heart stopped during surgery while under anesthesia:

Sometime during surgery, I went through a tunnel. Parts of my life passed me by. I had closed my eyes tight; I remember someone saying, open your eyes. I was in a pure white space and could see rooms with spirits walking around. I started to cry, but no tears. I remember looking at my hands, and they were translucent. Then an angel appeared; she had such a radiant glow to her beauty to behold. She comforted me, telling me I was safe. I remember telling her I wasn’t ready to die. She said she knew that. Then she pointed down, and I could see the doctors doing CPR on a little girl. Not really understanding that was me, I watched my whole operation, CPR and all. I told her that was so sad, she looks so young. Then she said they are bringing her back, and I felt like I was pushed and thrown back into that painful body.

"If near-death experiences were solely due to physical brain function, NDEs under general anesthesia should have less consciousness and alertness than other NDEs. But that is not what the NDERF studies found. The NDERF studies found that typical NDEs happen under anesthesia, usually with greater consciousness and alertness as commonly described in all NDEs. Either general anesthesia alone or cardiac arrest alone results in unconsciousness without any possibility of a lucid memory. Thus, typical near-death experiences occurring while under general anesthesia are doubly medically inexplicable. This is powerful evidence that consciousness can function apart from the physical body and separate from biological brain function.

"Bruce Greyson, MD also reported near-death experiences that occurred under general anesthesia:

In our collection of NDEs, 127 out of 578 NDE cases (22%) occurred under general anesthesia, and they included such features as OBEs that involved experiencers’ watching medical personnel working on their bodies, an unusually bright or vivid light, meeting deceased persons, and thoughts, memories, and sensations that were clearer than usual.

"Unlike NDEs, anesthesia awareness experiences are often unpleasant, painful, and frightening experiences. Anesthesia awareness more often involves brief and fragmentary memories with hearing described more than vision.

"Near-death experiences under general anesthesia show that full consciousness can exist separately from the physical body. NDEs arising while under general anesthesia are robust evidence that consciousness survives bodily death."

Jeffrey Long, MD, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights." In the next several posts I will share excerpts from Long's 2021 article. Footnotes have been deleted. The complete text is available as a pdf at https://www.nderf.org.