Synesthesia follows NDE: Krohn excerpt #16

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: "Another odd result of my near-death experience is that I now have what neuroscientists call synesthesia. Actually, I do not know if the synesthesia is a result of the near-death experience itself or is a function of being electrocuted by lightning. Either way, I never had it before September 2, 1988, and it was not until decades after my NDE that I first heard the word 'synesthesia,' much less understood what it meant.

"Synesthesia is essentially a neurological phenomenon in which the senses crisscross or fuse so that an individual might “hear” colors, “see” music, “taste” shapes, and so on. It sounds unbelievable, but it is actually much more common than people think. There are around eighty different types of synesthesia. I have a version called Grapheme-Color Synesthesia, where a person will associate letters, numbers, or even words with a specific color.

"I think the Garden experience flowed out of the near-death experience and into my daily life through a new set of abilities to sense things through multiple and unexpected sources. Shortly after my NDE, I was in bed with burned and bandaged feet. Perhaps this made me more attuned to the nuances of my perceptions. In any case, I began to realize that, whenever I heard a day of the week mentioned, I immediately and distinctly associated that day with a color. My perception of the color of a day of the week came to me as had the information I received in my NDE, as an instant download of knowledge.

"If Jeremy mentioned that he wanted a friend to come over on Tuesday, I would see blue. If Barry said he wanted to take the boys to the zoo on Saturday, I would see orange. The colors I associate with the days never vary. Monday was and still is always red, Tuesday is blue, Wednesday is yellow, Thursday is green, Friday is yellow, Saturday is orange, and Sunday is brown. These colors may vary from one synesthete to another, but they don’t for a specific person.

"Months of the year took on distinct hues for me, as well. For example, August is orange. It was the time I spent in the Garden immersed in meaning, knowledge, and sensory stimuli all at once that colored the months as it did. While I was in the Garden, the colors carried information. I received knowledge simply by being there and being immersed in the riotous Garden palette. And then again, when my deceased grandfather called me on the phone, I was shown a red point of light. That light carried love. So, the idea of associating color with other ideas is something I’ve become comfortable with.

"It was not long after I acknowledged to myself my newfound way of seeing the calendar as colorful that I realized I was doing the same thing with numbers. The digits from zero to nine all evoke a sensation of color within me. Zero was and still is white, one is orange, two is blue, three is yellow, four is blue, five is red, six is purple, seven is yellow, eight is green, and nine is orange.

"These colors are not nearly as spectacular as the otherworldly colors of the Garden, but they do saturate my life. Between the synesthesia and the ability to see colorful auras around living things, hues flow together for me like watercolors now. This ability allows me to see and sense my world awash in a glorious rainbow."

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.