Dr. Long's NDE surveys: Ruickbie excerpt #8

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 

For his 2011 book Evidence of the Afterlife, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long worked with a sub-set of 613 cases submitted between 2004 and 2008 – the “NDERF survey.” He found twelve common points of agreement in near-death experiences, although other studies have used more extensive scales – Bruce Greyson’s “near-death experience scale” is sixteen items long. Four of Long’s questions related to aspects of direct interest in this present study, concerning the location of consciousness, and the experience of space and time.

Long’s survey found that three-fifths (60.5%) said that they had had a sense of altered space and time, with a third (33.9%) saying specifically of time that “everything seemed to be happening at once.” About one in five people (22.2%) also said that they had experienced a review of past events in their lives. Long concluded that: “The NDERF study makes it clear that the events seen in the NDEr’s life review are real” and “further strong evidence for the reality of near-death experiences.”

In most cases, the NDE will involve some change in the perception of time, showing that our normal perception of time is not the only one. The life review challenges normal time to an even greater extent because the experience is not like ordinary memory recall, where you remain in your own viewpoint, but a transcendent view of the totality of past events, often with sound, emotion and even actual thoughts, from an external perspective. 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site, https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.