Character of consciousness: Mays excerpt #7

The Mays write: It is important to note that the transitions in and out of the body were triggered by repeated external events. Joe McMoneagle was repeatedly catapulted back to his body each time his friend violently struck him in the center of his chest. Mary Neal was drawn back to her body by the compassion she felt for her friends when they repeatedly pleaded with her to take a breath.

We can infer that the momentary resumption of the heartbeat can compel the NDEr back to their body. Joe McMoneagle briefly reunited with his body when he was struck in the chest. Laurin Bellg’s patient Howard “got jerked back to [his] body with a jolt” on the first defibrillation shock and then floated up again. Other NDErs appear to be drawn to return to the body out of the ties of love and compassion for others—Mary Neal for her kayaking friends and Tony Meo (Section 2D) for his wife and his family.

Throughout these cases, the NDEr experiences a continuity of consciousness, but their perspective changes from out-of-body to in-body. The body momentarily starts to function again: Joe was briefly looking up through his physical eyes and Mary was able to lay down in her body, take a breath, and then resume her heavenly journey.

Throughout the NDEr’s experience of the separation of their mind from the body and its return to the body, the mind holds a continuity of wakeful self-awareness. The unity of the mind is demonstrated most clearly in these cases of repeated transitions in and out of the body. Because there is a seamless transition of consciousness in leaving the body and then returning, it is evident that mediation by the brain does not alter the identity or unity of the mind.

There is a stark contrast between one’s experience of the “out-of-body mind” in an NDE and the “in-body mind” in ordinary consciousness. In the out-of-body state, NDErs feel no bodily pain, even when painful medical procedures are being performed on their physical body. Prior physical defects or disabilities such as blindness, deafness, lameness, or missing limbs are absent in most NDErs. NDErs who are blind or visually impaired, including those blind from birth, reported being able to see while out-of-body during their NDEs, and in some cases their perceptions were independently corroborated.

In the NDEr’s experience, the mind appears to operate as if it has been freed from the normal constraints of the physical body, with loss of pain and disabilities, feelings of weightlessness, sharpness of perceptions, clarity of thought, and instantaneous response to volition, as with NDEr Tony Meo traveling 1,250 miles back to this home.

When out-of-body, NDErs also experience enhanced visual perceptions, enhanced memory formation, and a heightened sense of reality:

During the out-of-body state, vision appears to be a special form of perception. NDErs report a kind of “wraparound” vision involving simultaneous 360° vision on all sides of an object, through it, and within it, or “vision from everywhere.” NDE researcher Jean-Pierre Jourdan cited the account of French NDEr JM:

“I was surprised that I could see at a 360° angle: I could see in front and behind me, I could see underneath, I could see far away, I could see up close and also transparently. I remember seeing a stick of lipstick in one of the nurses’ pockets. If I wanted to see inside the lamp which illuminated the room, I’d manage to do so, and all of this instantly, as soon as I wanted to. ... I could see, all at once, a green plaque with white letters saying, ‘Manufacture de Saint Etienne [a city in France].’ The plaque was under the edge of the operating table, covered up by the drape I was lying on. I could see with multiple axes of vision, from many places at once. This is the reason why I saw this plaque under the operating table, from a completely different angle, since I was up there by the ceiling and I still managed to see this plaque located under the table, itself covered by a sheet. When I wanted to check this, the surgeon and I realized the plaque was actually there and read ‘Manufacture d’armes de Saint Etienne’.”

Jourdan proposed that the unusual qualities of visual perception in NDEs suggest that the NDEr perceives the physical world “from a point located in an additional dimension—and therefore external to normal human space-time. ... [A] distinctive five-dimensional spatiotemporal perspective seems to be the case in NDEs.”

NDErs’ memory of the events of their NDEs are very vivid and are indelible upon returning to the body. Their accounts don’t fade and are not embellished over time, even after decades (18). Three separate studies of NDEr memories showed that NDErs remember being actively involved in the events and actually perceiving the phenomena. When recalling their NDE, the NDEr “relives” the experience. The memories formed of the NDE are more vivid—more real—than memories of real events.

Finally, the general consensus among NDErs is that their experiences while out-of-body are much more real than experiences of ordinary reality:

“A man who rolled his car over at the age of 21 said, ‘I have no doubt that this experience was real. It was vastly more real than anything we experience here.’ A woman who attempted suicide at the age of 31 said, ‘This was more real than anything on Earth. By comparison, my life in my body had been a dream.’ And a woman who, at the age of 25, bled out during a surgical procedure when the surgeon accidentally cut an artery, noted: ‘What happens during an NDE happens in the realm of truth, in the true reality, and what happens here on Earth is just a dream’.”

These enhanced capabilities evidently occur when the NDEr’s out-of-body mind is not constrained by brain function. The enhanced vision—seeing accurately from all directions at once and seeing through objects—is certainly not possible with physical vision. In the referenced studies, the characteristics of the memories formed in NDEs were found to be amplified compared to memories formed in ordinary consciousness of real events, which suggests that the NDE memory formation was not tied to brain function. 

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.