NDE common proximate cause: Mays excerpt #17

Suzanne B. Mays

The Mays write: NDEs were first noticed in cases in which the person was close to death or in a state of extreme psychological or physical distress. In fact, NDEs occur in people who are not near death or in distress. For example:

In a case we described earlier, Vicky recounted her father tickling her under the chin when she was an infant. “It made me laugh so hard I would fly up through the top of my head and out of my body. From the ceiling I’d look back at my little body on the couch.” These near-death-like experiences (NDLEs) can occur even when the person is not near death but, in fact, is completely healthy. Nonetheless, they score as valid NDEs on the NDE Scale.

Another case we described earlier was the 10-year-old NDEr’s experience during sleep. Even though she was not near death, her experience included being out-of-body, being surrounded by a bright light, having feelings of peace and calmness, being filled with a feeling of love, wanting to be immersed in the light, having veridical perceptions that she later verified as accurate, and finally being snapped back to her body in bed. Her NDLE would score at least 10 on the NDE Scale.

In a study at the University of Liège, Belgium, researchers compared NDE reports resulting from life-threatening events to NDE-like experiences occurring after non-life-threatening events, such as during sleep, fainting, meditation, drug or alcohol use, etc. Surprisingly, the results showed no significant difference in either NDE content (e.g., feelings of peace, separation from the body, a brilliant light) or NDE intensity between the near-death-like experiencers (NDLErs) and the so-called “real” NDErs. The average NDE score in the study was 16 for “real” NDErs and 17 for NDLErs.

This finding means that neither the proximity to death nor specific physiological or psychological factors proposed by skeptical theorists influenced the actual content or intensity of the NDE.

Thus, NDEs cannot be distinguished whether the person was perfectly healthy or in cardiac arrest: They are the same experience. The results of the study suggest that there is no physiological or psychological explanation that can account for all NDEs. Rather, they strongly suggest that NDEs are a common altered state of consciousness that can be triggered by many different types of prior conditions or may indeed have no apparent triggering event. So the altered state of consciousness in all NDEs—feeling separated from the body, seeing a brilliant light, entering an unearthly world—suggests that there is a common proximate or immediate cause of the experience.

A life-threatening condition may occur—such as cardiac arrest—but if the proximate cause is absent, no NDE occurs. Conversely, a non-life-threatening condition—such as meditation or sleep—may trigger the proximate cause, resulting in an NDLE that is indistinguishable in content and intensity from NDEs occurring in near-death circumstances (35).

In light of very strong evidence that NDEs occur in non-life-threatening circumstances—in normal, perfectly healthy individuals—the physiological and neurological explanations described earlier cannot apply to all NDEs, let alone provide a comprehensive explanation of all the various aspects of the core experience.

What could be the unifying factor that comes to bear in all NDEs? What is common in all of these NDE and NDLE cases?

Nearly 80% of NDErs report feeling separated from their body. Therefore, we propose that the common proximate cause of all NDEs is in fact the separation of the mind from the physical body. Various physiological and psychological conditions can trigger the separation of the person’s conscious mind from the body, or the separation can occur with no apparent prior condition.

The question still remains why, under seemingly identical circumstances, some people’s minds separate from their bodies and others’ do not. Nevertheless, our separation hypothesis remains consistent with the evidence regarding the occurrence of NDEs and NDLEs. 

 

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.