Deceased encounters: Mays excerpt #20

The Mays write: The encounters with deceased persons during an NDE involve more than simple recognition. Generally there is a full encounter and conversation with the deceased persons, in which they give details about who they are and exhibit characteristic aspects of their personality and their relationship to the NDEr. The exchange with the deceased loved one can even involve the resolution of a regret or a strained relationship with the deceased person. Here is an example of such an encounter from Laurelynn’s NDE during surgery:

“[N]ext I felt a presence approaching from my right, upper side. I was feeling even more peaceful and happy, especially when I discovered it was my thirty-year-old brother-in-law who had died seven months earlier. Although I couldn’t see with my eyes or hear with my ears, I instinctively knew that it was him. He didn’t have a physical form, but a presence. I could feel, hear, and see his smile, laughter, and sense of humor. It was as if I had come home, and my brother-in-law was there to greet me. I instantly thought how glad I was to be with him because now I could make up for the last time I had seen him before his death. I felt bad about not taking the time out of my busy schedule to have a heart-to-heart talk with him when he had asked me to. I felt no remorse now, but total acceptance and love from him about my actions.”

The skeptical explanations for encounters with deceased persons—that they are due to expectation, wishful thinking, imagination, or a lucky guess—don’t hold up for these particular types of cases:

The NDEr can’t be expecting or wishing to meet someone whom they know is still alive or whom they don’t know exists. There appears to be some other influence that draws particular deceased persons to the NDEr—usually a strong familial connection or a close friend relationship; less frequently, it can be the need to give the NDEr a message to living persons.

The unusual and unexpected—yet precise—nature of the veridical information received from the deceased person can’t be the result of the NDEr’s imagination or a lucky guess.

These cases are strong indications of actual contact with those who have died and therefore that the minds of deceased persons continue after physical death. 

 

Furthermore, in these cases, the deceased person seeks contact with living people in order to convey information to them, which suggests that the deceased person is aware of and cares for those still living on Earth. The reality experienced by deceased persons appears to be a shared reality with human beings living on Earth.

 

 

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.