Pamela Reynold's NDE during cardiac arrest

Dr. Pim van Lommel describes a surgery that involved cooling a patient’s body and inducing cardiac arrest. “Pamela Reynolds was a thirty-five-year-old busy working mother who had carved out a name for herself as a singer-songwriter. In 1991 she experienced extreme dizziness, loss of speech, and difficulty in moving her body. Her physician recommended a CAT scan, which revealed a giant aneurysm in one of her cerebral arteries close to the brain stem. If this aneurysm burst, a cerebral hemorrhage would be immediately fatal.

“Neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute decided to operate on Pamela, even though her chances of survival were slight. Everything that happened during her operation was carefully recorded. During the operation her body temperature was lowered to approximately 50° F. She was on a heart-lung machine because of the loss of all cardiac electrical activity (cardiac arrest), which always occurs during severe hypothermia. All the blood had been drained from her head. The electrical activity of her cerebral cortex (EEG) and of her brain stem (‘evoked potentials’ through 100-decibel clicks emitted by small molded speakers inserted into her ears) was under constant observation; in both cases, there was no activity whatsoever.

Cardiologist Michal Sabom would later appear with Pamela in a BBC program to discuss her surgery. In this program, he explained that: During standstill, Pam’s brain was found dead by all three clinical tests—her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Her eyes were lubricated to prevent drying and then taped shut. Additionally, she was under deep general anesthesia. In his book entitled Light and Death: One Doctor’s Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences (1998), Sabom records Pamela’s recollection of her experience.

I don’t remember seeing Doctor Spetzler at all. One of his fellows was with me at that time. After that nothing. Until the unpleasant sound. It was guttural. It was reminiscent of being in a dentist’s office. I remember the top of my head tingling, and I just sort of popped out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. I was the most aware I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I was looking down at my body, and I knew it was my body. But I didn’t care.[1]

During her surgery, Pam Reynolds “was fully instrumented under medical observation and known to be clinically dead. Clinical death is the state in which vital signs have ceased: the heart is in ventricular fibrillation, there is a total lack of electrical activity on the cortex of the brain (flat EEG), and brain-stem activity is abolished (loss of the corneal reflex, fixed and dilated pupils, and loss of the gag reflex).” Yet, “she was able to recall verifiable facts about her surgery that she could not have known if she were not in some way conscious during these events.”[2]

I was metaphorically sitting on Dr. Spetzler’s shoulder. It wasn’t like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision. There was so much in the operating room that I didn’t recognize, and so many people. I remember the instrument in his hand; it looked like the handle of my electric toothbrush. I had assumed that they were going to open the skull with a saw. I had heard the term saw, but what I saw looked a lot more like a drill than a saw. It even had little bits that were kept in this case that looked like the case that my father stored his socket wrenches in when I was a child. I saw the grip of the saw, but I didn’t see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch. I remember the heart-lung machine. I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize. And I distinctly remember a female voice saying: ‘We have a problem. Her arteries are too small.’ And then a male voice: ‘Try the other side.’

Also, Pam recalls, I felt a ‘presence.’ I sort of turned around to look at it. And that’s when I saw the very tiny pinpoint of light. And the light started to pull me, but not against my will. I was going of my own accord because I wanted to go. And there was a physical sensation—I know how that must sound, nonetheless it’s true—there was a physical sensation, rather like going over a hill real fast. It was like The Wizard of Oz—being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you’re not spinning around. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. It was like a tunnel, but it wasn’t a tunnel. And I went toward the light.

The closer I got to the light, I began to discern different figures, different people, and I distinctly heard my grandmother calling me. It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. And I immediately went to her. The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a light bulb. I noticed that as I began to discern different figures in the light―and they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them―they began to form shapes I could recognize and understand. And I saw many, many people I knew and many, many I didn’t know, but I knew that I was somehow and in some way connected to them and it felt great! Everyone I saw, looking back on it, fit perfectly into my understanding of what that person looked like at their best during their lives.

I recognized a lot of people. One of them was my grandmother. And I saw my uncle Gene, who passed away when he was only thirty-nine years old. He taught me a lot; he taught me to play my first guitar. It was communicated to me—that’s the best way I know how to say it because they didn’t speak like I’m speaking—that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to my physically. They would be unable to put (this) me back into the body (me), like I had gone too far and they couldn’t reconnect. I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared. I asked if God was the light, and the answer was: ‘God is not the light, the light is what happens when God breathes.’ And I distinctly remember thinking: ‘I’m standing in the breath of God.’

At some point in time I was reminded that it was time to go back. Of course I had made my decision to go back before I ever lay down on that table. But, you know, the more I was there, the better I liked it [laughs]. My uncle was the one who brought me back down to the body, but I didn’t want to get in it because it looked pretty much like what it was: void of life. I knew it would hurt, so I didn’t want to get in.

But my uncle says: ‘Like diving into a swimming pool, just jump in.’ No. ‘What about the children?’ You know what, the children will be fine [laughs]. And he goes: ‘Honey, you got to go.’ No. Then he pushed me. It’s taken a long time, but I think I’m ready to forgive him for that [laughs]. It was like diving into a pool of ice water. It hurt!

When I came back, and I was still under general anesthesia in the operating theater, they were playing, ‘Hotel California,’ and the line was ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.’ I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive, and he told me that I needed to sleep more [laughter]. When I regained consciousness, I was still on the respirator.

Pam’s surgeon believes her account: I don’t think that the observations she made were based on what she experienced as she went into the operating theater. They were just not available to her. For example the drill was all covered up. I find it inconceivable that the normal senses, such as hearing, let alone the fact that she had clicking devices in each ear, that there was any way for her to hear through normal auditory pathways.

Van Lommel points out: “During the operation Pam could hear the conversation between Spetzler and the female cardiovascular surgeon operating in her groin to link her up to the heart-lung machine. When the cardiovascular surgeon made an incision in her right groin, she found that Pamela’s veins and arteries were too small, so she had to switch to the left side. The doctors had a brief exchange on this matter. Pamela heard these remarks and repeated them word for word.”[3]

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), v-xviii.

---

[1] Ibid., 173.

[2] Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain, 155.

[3] Consciousness Beyond Life, 174-177. For a video about this NDE, see “Pam Reynolds – Life After Death” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R654H_qOvA.

Dr. Pim van Lommel's consciousness research

“By studying everything that has been thought and written about death throughout history—in all times, cultures, and religions—we may be able to form a different, better picture of death. But the same can be achieved by studying recent scientific research into near-death experience. Evidence has shown that most people lose all fear of death after an NDE. Their experience tells them that death is not the end of everything and that life goes on in one way or another. One patient wrote to me after his NDE: I’m not qualified to discuss something that can only be proven by death. However, for me personally this experience was decisive in convincing me that consciousness endures beyond the grave. Dead turned out to be not dead, but another form of life.

“Current science usually starts from perceptible phenomena. Yet at the same time we can (intuitively) sense that besides objective, sensory perception there is a role for subjective aspects such as feelings, inspiration, and intuition. Current scientific techniques cannot measure or demonstrate the content of consciousness. It is impossible to produce scientific evidence that somebody is in love or that somebody appreciates a certain piece of music or a particular painting. The things that can be measured are the chemical, electric, or magnetic changes in brain activity; the content of thoughts, feelings, and emotions cannot be measured. If we had no direct experience of our consciousness through our feelings, emotions, and thoughts, we would not be able to perceive it.

“Moreover, people must appreciate that their picture of the material world is derived from and constructed solely on the basis of their own perception. There is simply no other way.

“All of us create our reality on the basis of our consciousness. When we are in love the world is beautiful, and when we are depressed that very same world is a torment. The material, ‘objective’ world is merely the picture constructed in our consciousness. People thus preserve their own worldview. This is precisely the kind of idea that a large part of the scientific community has difficulty accepting.

“On the basis of prospective studies of near-death experience, recent results from neurophysiological research, and concepts from quantum physics, I strongly believe that consciousness cannot be located in a particular time and place. This is known [in quantum physics] as nonlocality. Complete and endless consciousness is everywhere in a dimension not tied to time or place, where past, present, and future all exist and are accessible at the same time. This endless consciousness is always in and around us. We have no theories to prove or measure nonlocal space and nonlocal consciousness in the material world. The brain and the body merely function as an interface or relay station to receive part of our total consciousness and part of our memories into our waking consciousness.

“Near-death experience prompted the concept of a nonlocal and endless consciousness, which allows us to understand a wide range of special states of consciousness, such as mystical and religious experiences, deathbed visions (end-of-life experiences), perimortem and postmortem experiences (nonlocal communication), heightened intuitive feelings (nonlocal information exchange), prognostic dreams, remote viewing (nonlocal perception), and the mind’s influence on matter (nonlocal perturbation). Ultimately, we cannot avoid the conclusion that endless consciousness has always been and always will be, independently of the body. There is no beginning and there will never be an end to our consciousness. For this reason we ought to seriously consider the possibility that death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another and that during life the body functions as an interface or place of resonance.

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), v-xviii.

Consciousness and our brains

Dr. Pim van Lommel writes: “For me it all started with curiosity—with asking questions, with seeking to explain certain objective findings and subjective experiences. Learning about near-death experience raised a number of fundamental questions for me. An NDE is a special state of consciousness that occurs during an imminent or actual period of physical, psychological, or emotional death. How and why does an NDE occur? How does the content of an NDE come about? Why does an NDE bring about such profound changes in someone’s life? I was unable to accept some of the answers to these questions because they seemed incomplete, incorrect, or unsubstantiated. I grew up in an academic environment where I was taught that there is a reductionist and materialist explanation for everything. And up until that point, I had always accepted this as indisputably true.

“Some scientists do not believe in questions that cannot be answered, but they do believe in wrongly formulated questions. In 2005 the journal Science published a special anniversary issue featuring 125 questions that scientists have so far failed to answer. The most important unanswered question, What is the universe made of? Was followed by, What is the biological basis of consciousness? I would like to reformulate this second question as follows: Does consciousness have a biological basis at all? We can also distinguish between temporary and timeless aspects of our consciousness. This prompts the following question: Is it possible to speak of a beginning of our consciousness, and will our consciousness ever end?

“To answer these questions, we need a better understanding of the relationship between brain function and consciousness. We have to find out if there is any indication that consciousness can be experienced during sleep, general anesthesia, coma, brain death, clinical death, the process of dying and, finally, after confirmed death. If the answer to any of these questions is yes, we must try to find scientific explanations and analyze the relationship between brain function and consciousness in these situations.

“What is death, what is life, and what happens when I am dead? Why are most people so afraid of death? Surely death can be a release after a difficult illness? Why do doctors often perceive the death of a patient as a failure on their part? Because the patient lost his or her life? Why are people no longer allowed to ‘just’ die of a serious, terminal illness but instead are put on a ventilator and given artificial feeding through tubes and drips? Why do some people in the final stages of a malignant disease opt for chemotherapy, which may prolong life for a short while but does not always improve the quality of their remaining life? Why is our first impulse to prolong life and delay death at all costs? Is fear of death the reason why? And does this fear stem from ignorance of what death might be? Are our ideas about death accurate at all? Is death really the end of everything?

“Even medical training pays scant attention to what death might be. By the time they graduate, most doctors have not given death much thought. Throughout life 500,000 cells in the body die every second, 30 million every minute, and 50 billion every day. These cells are all replaced again on a daily basis, giving a person an almost entirely new body every couple of years. Cell death is therefore not the same as physical death. In life, our bodies change constantly from one second to the next. Yet we neither feel nor realize it. How do we explain the continuity of this constantly changing body? Cells are building blocks comparable to the building blocks of a house, but who designs, plans, and coordinates the construction of a house: Not the building blocks themselves. So the obvious question is: What explains the construction and coordination of the ever-changing body from one second to the next?

“All bodies function the same on a biochemical and physiological level, yet all people are different. The cause of this difference is not just physical. People have different characters, feelings, moods, levels of intelligence, interests, ideas, and needs. Consciousness plays a major role in this difference. This raises the question: do we human beings equal our bodies, or do we have bodies?

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010).

Dr. George Richie's impact on NDE research

Dr. Pim van Lommel writes: “Although I had never forgotten the successfully resuscitated patient in 1969, with his memories of the period of his cardiac arrest, I had not done anything with the experience. This changed in 1976 when I read a book about near-death experiences by Dr. George Ritchie with the title Return from Tomorrow. When Richie had double pneumonia as a medical student in 1943, he experienced a period of clinical death. At the time antibiotics such as penicillin were not yet widely used. Following an episode of very high fever and extreme tightness of the chest, he passed away: he ceased breathing and his pulse also stopped. He was pronounced dead by a doctor and covered with a sheet.

“But a male nurse was so upset by the death of this medical student that he managed to persuade the attendant doctor to administer an adrenalin injection in the chest near the heart—a most unusual procedure in those days. Having been ‘dead’ for more than nine minutes, George Ritchie regained consciousness, to the immense surprise of the doctor and nurse.

“It emerged that during his spell of unconsciousness, the period in which he had been pronounced dead, he had had an extremely powerful experience of which he could recollect many details. At first he was unable and afraid to talk about it. Later he wrote a book about what happened to him in those nine minutes. And after becoming a psychiatrist, he began to share his experiences in lectures to medical students.

“One of the students attending these lectures was Raymond Moody, who was so intrigued by this story that he began to look into experiences that may occur during life-threatening situations. In 1975 he wrote the book Life After Life, which became a global best seller. In this book Moody first coined the term near-death experience (NDE).

“After reading Ritchie’s book, I kept wondering how somebody can possibly experience consciousness during cardiac arrest and whether this is a common occurrence. So in 1986 I began to systematically ask all the patients at my outpatient clinic who had undergone resuscitation whether they had any recollection of the period of their cardiac arrest. I was surprised to hear, within the space of two years, twelve reports of such a near-death experience among just over fifty cardiac arrest survivors.”

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010).

Dr. van Lommel’s first “near-death experience”

On his web site Dr. Pim van Lommel says he “worked as a cardiologist at the Rijnstate Hospital, an 800-bed teaching hospital in Arnhem in the Netherlands, from 1977 to 2003.” After more than twenty years of research, in 2001 van Lommel and his colleagues published in the medical journal The Lancet their Dutch study of near-death experiences. “Over the past several years Pim van Lommel has been lecturing all over the world on near-death experiences and the relationship between consciousness and brain function.”

I suggest from my research that van Lommel’s Consciousness Beyond Life provides the most thorough discussion of NDEs in a scientific book. Chapter titles include: What Happens in the Brain When the Heart Suddenly Stops? What Do We Know About Brain Function? Quantum Physics and Consciousness, The Brain and Consciousness, and Endless Consciousness. In 320 pages van Lommel offers a comprehensive narrative supported by more than 30 pages of endnotes. I refer extensively to this book in my writing about NDEs, but in my blog include a few of the arguments presented in this comprehensive study.

Van Lommel begins Consciousness Beyond Life with a quote written early in the 20th-century by Frederick van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist: “All science is empirical science, all theory is subordinate to perception; a single fact can overturn an entire system.” Then van Lommel relates his personal experience as a young cardiologist.

“It is 1969. At the coronary care unit the alarm goes off. The monitor shows that the electrocardiogram of a patient with a myocardial infarction (heart attack) has flat lined. The man has suffered a cardiac arrest. Two nurses hurry over to the patient, who is no longer responsive, and quickly draw the curtains around his bed. One of the nurses starts CPR while the other places a mask over his mouth and administers oxygen. A third nurse rushes over with the resuscitation trolley that contains the defibrillator. The defibrillator is charged, the paddles are covered in gel, the patient’s chest is bared, the medical staff let go of the patient and the bed, and the patient is defibrillated. He receives an electric shock to the chest. It has no effect. Heart massage and artificial respiration are resumed, and, in consultation with the doctor, extra medication is injected into the IV drip. Then the patient is defibrillated for the second time. This time his cardiac rhythm is reestablished, and after a spell of unconsciousness that lasted about four minutes, the patient regains consciousness, to the great relief of the nursing staff and the attendant doctor.

“I was the attending doctor. I had started my cardiology training that year. Following the successful resuscitation, everybody was pleased—everybody except the patient. He had been successfully revived, yet to everybody’s surprise he was extremely disappointed. He spoke of a tunnel, colors, a light, a beautiful landscape, and music. He was extremely emotional. The term near-death experience (NDE) did not yet exist, and I had never heard of people remembering the period of their cardiac arrest.

“While studying for my degree, I had learned that such a thing is in fact impossible: being unconscious means being unaware—and the same applies to people suffering a cardiac arrest or patients in a coma. At such a moment it is simply impossible to be conscious or to have memories because all brain function has ceased. In the event of a cardiac arrest, a patient is unconscious, is no longer breathing, and has no palpable pulse or blood pressure.”

Pim van Lommel, www.pimvanlommel.nl/Pim_van_lommel_eng.

A New Testament Prayer

O God of love,

may your grace and peace come,

may your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Keep us healthy and humble ‘til our time has come.

And as we forgive those who’ve done us harm,

forgive us for the harm we’ve done.

And keep us safe from temptation and evil.

For you are the Way, and the Truth, and the Light,

now and forever. Amen.

Dr. Parti's NDE affects his wife and children

Dr. Rajiv Parti's wife, Arpana, admitted: I both like and fear the new Rajiv and all the changes. The same was true, Dr. Parti writes, "of our (then) teenage daughter, Ambika. We had not talked to her in detail about my NDE. But one day she happened by the kitchen when Arpana and I were talking about the experience, and rather than stopping the conversation, we decided to include her. Before long, she was deeply engrossed in the story and very understanding of the transformational experience that had taken place.

“When we told her that we had agreed to swap our house for a smaller one, however, Ambika responded, This is going to affect my whole life! Mom, this is really going to change your whole life. 

"My sons had a similar reaction. When I came back from the hospital, neither wanted to hear about my experience. Our eldest child, Raghav, had a response of almost total indifference, not only to my near-death experience but also to me in general. I had not treated my son admirably. In fact I had not treated anyone in my family admirably.

“But I knew: It was not following the guidance from my near-death experience that might ruin my family. It would be to continue as I had, with very little true spiritual guidance at all!

On his website, Parti describes his wife’s decision to end their marriage. “As the days passed and our anger and vengeance ebbed, I finally heard the heartbreak in my wife’s voice in a new way. And I realized that I had broken her heart as well, even if unconsciously. And perhaps I started us down the road that brought us to impending divorce.

“Thank goodness I saw the opportunity to apply the lessons I learned from my NDE. I knew that the only way to change my relationship and thrive in love again was to change myself. And so I embarked upon a journey to heal my broken heart and grow in compassion, forgiveness, and love.

"It was not easy—it was painful like childbirth. But now my wife and I have a new marriage, a better relationship than we ever had. The abundance of love and joy is staggering! My old relationship had to die before we could experience this new love.

"And so I set out to become the best healer and coach I could be. I studied and learned new ways to apply the timeless wisdom shared with me during my near death experience. I took a vow of bodhisattva service, seva—as a heartbreak healer and love coach—helping the brokenhearted heal, and become empowered to thrive in love again.”

Rajiv Parti, Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back (Atria Books, 2016).

Learn more about his practice at https://www.rajivparti.com.

In this video interview Dr. Parti describes his NDE and explains how it transformed his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l-nbk_8EII