Scientific debate over near-death experiences

As a flat EEG doesn’t prove all brain activity has ceased, NDE critics argue there is no reason to reject the long-held scientific assumption that conscious activity is always the result of neural activity.

Dr. Pim van Lommel responds by referring to the knowledge verified by brain research. “The issue is not whether there is some immeasurable activity somewhere but whether there is any sign of those specific forms of brain activity that, according to current neuroscience, are considered essential to experiencing consciousness. And there is no sign whatsoever of those specific forms of brain activity in the EEGs of cardiac arrest patients.”

NDE research supports the conclusion that: “the current materialistic view of the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers and psychologists is too restricted for an under-standing of this phenomenon. There are now good reasons to assume our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced conscious can be experienced separate from the body.”[1]

One NDE survivor writes: An overwhelming feeling of love came over me, not the earthly feeling I was quite familiar with, but something I can’t describe. Above me I saw a bright light, and on my way there I heard beautiful music and I saw colors I’d never seen before. As well as the feelings I just described, I had the impression that this was a different dimension altogether. And if anything was missing it was our earthly conception of time!

Other NDE survivors, like my father, met deceased loved ones. Another survivor says: During my NDE following a cardiac arrest, I saw my dead grandmother and a man who looked at me lovingly but whom I didn’t know. Over ten years later my mother confided on her deathbed that I’d been born from an extramarital affair; my biological father was a Jewish man who’d been deported and killed in World War II. My mother showed me a photograph. The unfamiliar man I’d seen more than ten years earlier during my NDE turned out to be my biological father.[2]

In more than one NDE report, a blind person ‘sees.’ A seventy-year-old woman suffering a cardiac arrest, who had been blind since age eighteen, was able during her out-of-body experience to watch the doctors and nurses resuscitating her body. Psychiatrist Raymond Moody reports: “Not only could she describe what the instruments used looked like, but she could even describe their colors. The most amazing thing about this to me,” Moody says, “was that most of these instruments weren’t even thought of over fifty years ago when she could last see.”[3]

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[1] Pim van Lommel, “Pathophysiological Aspects of Near-Death Experiences,” in Mahendra Perera, Karuppiah Jagadheesan and Anthony Peake, editors, Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences, 90, italics added.

[2] Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 27-29, 32-33.

[3] Raymond A. Moody, The Light Beyond, 134-135.

Carl G. Jung's near-death experience

In a hospital for surgery in Switzerland in 1944, the psychiatrist Carl G. Jung had a cardiac arrest and recalls this “near-death experience” [which occurred before Raymond Moody used this phrase to identify this experience while dying].

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver.

Far away to the left lay a broad expanse—the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the sliver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back—as if in the upper left of a map—I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view—approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had every seen. Then Jung recalls: A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space. I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me—an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

The experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a ‘fait accompli,’ without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

After he had recovered from his cardiac arrest, Jung wrote: I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real.

We shy away from the word ‘eternal,’ but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time; nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one that cannot be produced by imagination.

How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things that would not yet have begun, other things that would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one. One is interwoven into an indescribably whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity.

“Carl G. Jung’s Near-Death Experience,” http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/carl-jung.html. An excerpt in van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 22-23. See Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 289-90.

A near-death experience after her newborn died

“E. M. was having a normal pregnancy when her contractions began at nine months and her husband brought her to the hospital. In the delivery room, however, her contractions stop. She becomes aware that people are rushing around and talking to one another with urgent voices. Also, her husband has fainted and had to be carried out of the room.

She writes: Suddenly I realize that I’m looking down at a woman lying on a bed with her legs in supports. I see the nurses and doctors panicking. I see a lot of blood on the bed and on the floor, I see large hands pressing down hard on the woman’s belly, and then I see the woman giving birth to a child. The child is immediately taken to another room. The nurses look dejected. Everybody is waiting.

My head is knocked back hard when the pillow is suddenly pulled away. Once again, I witness a great commotion. Swift as an arrow, I fly through a dark tunnel. I’m engulfed by an overwhelming feeling of peace and bliss. I feel intensely satisfied, happy, calm, and peaceful. I hear wonderful music. I see beautiful colors and gorgeous flowers in all colors of the rainbow in a large meadow.

At the far end is a beautiful, clear, warm light. This is where I must go. I see a figure in a light garment. This figure is waiting for me and reaches out her hand. It feels like a warm and loving welcome. Hand in hand, we move toward the beautiful and warm light. Then she lets go of my hand and turns around.

I feel something pulling me back. I notice a nurse slapping me hard on my cheeks and calling my name. After some time I realize where I am and I know that my child isn’t well. Our daughter is no longer alive. This return hurts so much! I long to go back—indeed, where to?

When I returned from this beautiful world, my reception here in this world was cold, frosty, and above all loveless. The nurse with whom I tried to share my amazing experience dismissed it by saying that I would soon receive medication to help me sleep and then it would all be over. All over? I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it to be over at all. I wanted to go back. The gynecologist told me that I was still young and that I could have plenty more children; I should move on and look forward to the future.

I stopped telling my story. It was difficult enough to find words for my experience because how could words express what I had experienced? But what else could I do? Who could I talk to? What was the matter with me? Had I gone crazy? The only person I could tell my story to, over and over again, was my husband. He listened and asked questions even though he didn’t understand what had happened to me, and whether I was the only person with such an experience.

Dr. Pim van Lommel writes: "For more than twenty years E. M. repressed her feelings about this near-death experience, until depression led her to a psychologist who not only listened to her story, but also believed it." E. M. explains: Now I realize my fear of death has disappeared completely, in marked contrast with the years prior. This is why I have difficulties with the concept of time. These days I constantly lose track of time, whereas before I lived by the clock.

Material things aren’t important to me. The only thing that matters to me is unconditional love. And this is what I’ve always had with my husband. Yet recently I read in a study that unconditional love between human beings is an illusion. And they refuse to believe me! This is why I feel like an outsider sometimes. This is why I’m always, especially during vacations, on the lookout for landscapes, for colors and flowers.

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), 2-5. For another video recollection of an NDE, see “Present! – Beverly Brodsky and the NDE” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8zEzAEtQ3A.

A comatose patient's surprising memory

Dr. Pim van Lommel personally verified another NDE account in a coronary care unit, which was recorded by the nurse caring for the patient.

“During the night shift the ambulance crew brings in a forty-four-year-old cyanotic [purplish-blue skin discoloration], comatose man. About an hour earlier he had been found in a public park by passers-by, who had initiated heart massage. After admission to the coronary care unit, he receives artificial respiration with a balloon and a mask as well as heart massage defibrillation.

“When I want to change the respiration method, when I want to intubate the patient, the patient turns out to have dentures in his mouth. Before intubating him, I remove the upper set of dentures and put it on the crash cart. Meanwhile we continue extensive resuscitation. After approximately ninety minutes, the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he’s still ventilated and intubated, and he remains comatose.

“In this state he is transferred to the intensive care unit for further treatment. After more than a week in coma the patient returns to the coronary care unit, and I see him when I distribute the medication.

“As soon as he sees me he says,” Oh, yes, but you, you know where my dentures are.

“I’m flabbergasted. Then he tells me,” Yes, you were there when they brought me into the hospital, and you took the dentures out of my mouth and put them on that cart; it had all these bottles on it, and there was a sliding drawer underneath, and you put my teeth there.

“I was all the more amazed because I remembered this happening when the man was in a deep coma and undergoing resuscitation.

“After further questioning, it turned out that the patient had seen himself lying in bed and that he had watched from above how nursing staff and doctors had been busy resuscitating him. He was also able to give an accurate and detailed description of the small room where he had been resuscitated and of the appearance of those present. While watching this scene, he had been terrified that we were going to stop resuscitating and that he would die.

“And it’s true that we had been extremely negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his poor condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he had been making desperate but unsuccessful attempts at letting us know he was still alive and that we should continue resuscitating. He’s deeply impressed by his experience and says he’s no longer afraid of death.”

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), 20-21. See Pim van Lommel et al., “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039-45.

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.

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[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).