What is involved in near-death experiences?

Cardiologist Pim van Lommel writes: “A near-death experience (NDE) can be defined as the reported memory of a range of impressions during a special state of consciousness, including a number of special elements, such as an out-of-body experience (OBE), pleasant feelings, seeing a tunnel and/or light, seeing deceased relatives, a life review, or a conscious return into the body.” [AS, 19]

Radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long studied a wider range of NDE survivors than van Lommel under the auspices of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation. Long writes: “The NDERF study took a straightforward approach by defining both the near-death and experience components of near-death experience. I considered individuals to be ‘near death’ if they were so physically compromised that they would die if their condition did not improve. The NDErs studied were unconscious and often apparently clinically dead, with absence of heartbeat and breathing. The ‘experience’ had to occur at the time they were near death. Also, the experience had to be lucid, to exclude descriptions of only fragmentary and disorganized memories.” {EA, 5}

Long proposes “that NDEs may include some or all of the following twelve elements:

1.  Out-of-body experience (OBE): Separation of consciousness from the physical body

2.  Heightened senses

3.  Intense and generally positive emotions or feelings

4.  Passing into or through a tunnel

5.  Encountering a mystical or brilliant light

6.  Encountering other beings, either mystical beings or deceased relatives or friends

7.  A sense of alteration of time or space

8.  Life review

9.  Encountering unworldly (‘heavenly’) realms

1   Encountering or learning special knowledge

11 Encountering a boundary or barrier

1   A return to the body, either voluntary or involuntary” {EA, 6-7}

Long explains: “That so many people are willing to share their NDEs with others speaks volumes about the power of these experiences in a person’s life. Respondents describe their experiences in a variety of ways, calling them ‘unspeakable,’ ‘ineffable,’ unforgettable,’ ‘beautiful beyond words,’ and so on. More than 95 percent of the respondents feel their NDE was ‘definitely real,’ while virtually all of the remaining respondents feel it was ‘probably real.’ Not one respondent has said it was ‘definitely not real.’ Some say it was not only the most real thing to ever happen to them but also the best event of their lives.” {EA, 2}

Long argues that the results of his research justify reaffirming the old assumption that there is life after death. He presents the results of scientifically studying more than 1,300 cases shared with NDERF in his book, Evidence of the Afterlife.

AS - “Near-Death Experiences: The Experience of the Self as Real and Not as an Illusion,” Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923, 1234 (2011) 19–28, http://pimvanlommel.nl/files/NDE-NYAS-Experience-Self-article.pdf

 

Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry,  Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (2010).

Experiences of grace and going home

Wendy writes: I knew that I had died and would be leaving behind my baby and my husband, but I didn’t care. I wanted to go into the light. I wanted to go home. I felt like a blanket of love was wrapped around me. When I went through the light, all my dead relatives were there. I knew everyone even though then I hadn’t met them before. They were so happy to see me and welcomed me home. Even though they appeared in human form, I sensed that that wasn’t their true form. I had a connection with everyone—like some kind of collective consciousness. {GA, 74}

Sandy, who had a near-death experience at age five, later wrote: The Light was a sparkling glowing cloud. I heard a voice in my head and knew it was God. We never talked about God at my house, and I never went to church. Yet I knew this place, with this beautiful light, was God and my real home. I was surrounded by the light and one with it. It was like being scooped up and held safe by my daddy when a dog was barking at me, only more so. {GA, 121}

Another NDE survivor treasures this memory: On the other side, the arms of my loved ones welcomed me home. The feelings weren’t of this earth. {GA, 14}

After becoming unconscious during a grand mal seizure, Stacy recalls: I was totally relaxed, calm, and peaceful, and I knew I could comprehend everything about my life. I was home in God’s arms, and I was being given a peek at Universal Knowledge through the eyes of God. {GA, 115}

Words are inadequate to describe Heaven, Diane says, recalling her NDE experience. But I knew I was home. I knew this was where I’d come from. {GA, 151}

And another NDE survivor remembers: At the top of this mountain was a beautiful city. I knew some of the people there, but couldn’t make out the faces of others. I started walking up the mountain to get to the city, but a voice behind me said, “No, you can’t go up yet; it’s not your time.” I argued with the voice because I felt that if I could get to that city, I would be at home. {GA, 23}

After recalling in her NDE being “cleverly mean” to a childhood friend, and feeling remorse, Carol writes: Then I was embraced by love with layer upon layer of compassion. It felt like Home! Like coming inside from the snow to a warm fire, the smell of good cooking, and the laughter of family. I was euphoric beyond anything I’d felt before or anything I’ve felt since. {GA, 100}

These are not experiences of ordinary consciousness, for everyone having a near-death experience is dying and suffering cardiac arrest or in a coma or unconscious due to lack of oxygen or a general anesthetic or brain trauma. Breathing has stopped, the heart is no longer beating, eyes are closed—and yet the dying person “sees” and “hears” words that are unspoken, and also and has strong feelings as well as enduring memories. Furthermore, many NDE survivors remember that during their extraordinary experience separated from their human bodies, they were “back home” in the heavenly realm of Love and Light.

These NDE affirmations reminded me of African-American spirituals that refer to “going home” after death. “Swing low sweet chariot,” which tells of the prophet Elijah being taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2:11), is followed by the words: “coming for to carry me home.” The chorus of “Steal Away” is: “Steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.” And all the verses of “Precious Lord” end with the three words, “lead me home.”

Also during slavery, at the end of the 17th century, two English Christians wrote hymns that remain popular, perhaps because of the image of going “home” after death. Isaac Watts, minister of a Congregational Church in London, wrote “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” with opening and final verses that end by affirming God as “our eternal home.” John Newton, a former slaver trader who after his conversion served as curate in the village of Olney, wrote the words to “Amazing Grace.” It’s third verse reads: “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

These experiences and hopes challenge our faith and beliefs. Is our everyday consciousness an embodied and limited experience of the greater consciousness that we each are? Do near-death experiences reveal an eternal Consciousness that gives purpose and meaning to our embodied experience? Do the experiences of near-death survivors verify that our real home is a transcendent realm of timeless Light and Love? 

{GA} quotes from Jeffrey Long, God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience (2016).

Dr. Eben Alexander's NDE transformed his life

If there was ever a NDE survivor with more credibility as a scientist than Eben Alexander, I haven’t heard of him. Alexander was an experienced neurosurgeon at the time of his near-death experience. He writes in his book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife: “As a neurosurgeon, I’d heard many stories over the years of people who had strange experiences, usually after suffering cardiac arrest: stories of traveling to mysterious, wonderful landscapes; of talking to dead relatives—even to meeting God Himself. Wonderful stuff, no question. But all of it, in my opinion, was pure fantasy.

“What caused the otherworldly types of experiences that such people so often report? I didn’t claim to know, but I did know that they were brain-based. All of consciousness is. If you don’t have a working brain, you can’t be conscious. This is because the brain is the machine that produces consciousness in the first place. When the machine breaks down, consciousness stops. Or so I would have told you before my own brain crashed.

“On November 10, 2008, however, I was struck by a rare illness and thrown into a coma for seven days. During that time, my entire neocortex—the outer surface of the brain, the part that makes us human—was shut down. Inoperative.

“Mine was in some ways a perfect story of near-death experiences. As a practicing neurosurgeon with decades of research and hands-on work in the operating room behind me, I was in a better-than-average position to judge not only the reality but also the implications of what happened to me.

“Those implications are tremendous beyond description. My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness; that human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.

“The place I went was real. Real in a way that makes the life we’re living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison. This doesn’t mean I don’t value the life I’m living now, however. In fact, I value it more than I ever did before. I do so because I now see it in its true context.

“This life isn’t meaningless. But we can’t see that fact from here—at least most of the time. What happened to me while I was in that coma is hands-down the most important story I will ever tell. But it’s a tricky story to tell because it is so foreign to ordinary understanding. I can’t simply shout it from the rooftops. At the same time, my conclusions are based on a medical analysis of my experience, and on my familiarity with the most advanced concepts in brain science and consciousness studies. Once I realized the truth behind my journey, I knew I had to tell it. Doing so properly has become the chief task of my life.

“That’s not to say I’ve abandoned my medical work and my life as a neurosurgeon. But now that I have been privileged to understand that our life does not end with the death of the body or the brain, I see it as my duty, my calling, to tell people about what I saw beyond the body and beyond this earth. I am especially eager to tell my story to the people who might have heard stories similar to mine before and wanted to believe them, but had not been able to fully do so.

Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2012).

Near-death experiences confirm faith in God

Dr. Jeffrey Long writes: “When I first realized that over 40 percent of near-death experiencers were aware of the existence of God or a supreme being during their NDE, I was shocked. This was an extraordinary finding! No prior NDE study had asked so many NDErs directly about encountering God in their NDEs, and no other study had reported such high numbers of NDErs being aware of God.

“To put this statistic in context, the percentage of NDErs who were aware of God or a supreme being during their NDE is greater than the percentage of NDErs reporting a tunnel, encountering deceased loved ones, or a having a life review. This new information tells us one element of NDEs happens more often than any of these other NDE elements: awareness of the existence of God.

“It is also remarkable how much near-death experiencers’ belief in God increases after their NDE. Before their experience 39 percent of NDErs believed “God definitely exists.” At the time they shared their NDEs with the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), an average of twenty-two years later, 72.6 percent of the NDErs believed “God definitely exists.”

"To put this another way, there was an 86 percent increase in those who believe God definitely exists after their NDEs.

“In my research, I found that NDErs generally experience the heavenly realm in three different ways, with some overlap: (1) as an overwhelmingly beautiful place; (2) as a boundary between life and death; or (3) as a meeting place with God, spirits, or deceased loved ones.”

Jeffrey Long with Paul Perry, God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience (HarperCollins e-books, 2010).

Research by NDERF into afterlife experiences

Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist in Houma, Louisiana, founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation in 1998. Under the auspices of the NDERF he collected and studied the stories of thousands of people who have journeyed to the afterlife. Though there are a wide variety of differences in how people experience NDEs—some see a bright light, others go through a tunnel, still others experience a review of their life—he discovered that many of the accounts shared a remarkably similar description of God; a Supreme Being who radiated love and grace.

Long and writes in God and the Afterlife: “Encounters with God almost always take place in a heavenly realm that may consist of a variety of common earthly elements, including mountains, valleys, forests, streams, lakes, rivers, and dwellings. Often they are described as having a decidedly unearthly appearance (often due to color or brightness or scale). There can also be vast cities that may be beautiful beyond anything on earth.

“Typically this place is associated with feelings of peace, love, and connection in the environment. Beautiful or ‘indescribable’ music is reported. Sometimes spiritual beings or angels are present. The importance of learning or gaining knowledge is also often in evidence, and there are frequent reports of seeing or experiencing institutions of learning (sometimes called ‘temples of knowledge’). People also often describe receiving knowledge directly in the form of telepathic exchange from Light Beings.” (135-136)

This is Edna’s experience: I went down a blue tube with a bright light at the bottom. When I exited the tube, I was surrounded by the most wonderful music—similar to pan pipes—that was everywhere. The feeling was so peaceful and there was no pain. I asked, “Where am I?” and was told, “The Halls of Music.” There were a lot of people, and they were all exuding so much love. The sky was a wonderful blue and the grass so green. I saw a bridge and wanted to cross it, but I couldn’t—there was some kind of invisible barrier. Someone I felt I knew appeared on the other side of the bridge, and he said, ”It’s not time yet. You still have work to do.” I wanted so much to stay, but in no time I was back in my body. (145-146)

Diane’s experience is visually different but also uplifting: Words are inadequate to describe Heaven. But I knew I was home. I knew this was where I’d come from. I first came to a serene and beautiful countryside filled with animals—they were so beautiful and contented, so full of love. The grass and trees and flowers were all so exquisite, and a vibration of love flowed back to me from them. The water was living and sparkled back to me with love. I heard music all around, fully more melodic and more beautiful than anyone could write on this earth, just suddenly playing and filling my soul with joy. Everything was richer and more beautiful than anything we could ever create on earth. I realized that everything we create that is beautiful—all paintings, woven rugs, tapestries, carvings—all have their seed from Heaven. We saw all this before we came to earth, and we try to recapture some of Heaven while on earth. We deeply desire Heaven on earth. We miss it deep in our souls. An angel took me to view the reflection of God’s Light—not the full force of His Awesome Wonder. I was so filled with love and wanted to hug Him with joy. His voice came into my mind, and He commanded me to stretch out my hands and arms so that I could see I was made of solid light. And then He imparted the knowledge that we all are made of solid light, and we each have our own identity and purpose. Each of us was created before we entered earth, and each was male or female before that entry. He contains both sides, and this is the truth of it. For it is not the sexual side, but the strong and the gentle of both sides of Him that determine who we will be—a balance of His being. I have a peace most people don’t have about death because I know that is what Christ meant by the words, “Unless you are born again, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” They have nothing to do with the meaning religion has given them; they are about something we all must do.  Our Father told me that I had to go back to earth and complete my test; there was much I still needed to do. He affirmed that He loved me and would be with me all my life. (151-153)

Jeffrey Long, MD and Paul Perry, God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience (2016).

 

Rupert Sheldrake's Christian faith

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge. [1]

Sheldrake explains his faith in God in his book The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God. He begins a chapter on “The Greening of God” by noting: “If nature is alive, she can be thought of as entirely autonomous, with no need for God.” But “if God exists,” God must “be the God of a living world.”

As a young man Sheldrake was attracted to “the religious traditions of the East,” because it seemed to him that Christianity had “lost contact with mystical insight, visionary experience, a sense of the life of nature, and the power of ritual.” He lived and worked in India for several years, staying for a year and a half in Tamil Nadu in the ashram of Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk. Much to his surprise, Sheldrake writes, through this experience he was “drawn back to Christianity.”[2]

In The Rebirth of Nature Sheldrake affirms a “new, evolutionary view of God,” as described in a 1981 book entitled The Liberation of Life: From Cell to the Community: “God is not the world, and the world is not God. But God includes the world, and the world includes God. God perfects the world and the world perfects God. There is no world apart from God and there is no God apart from some world. Of course there are differences. Whereas no world can exist without God, God can exist without this world. Not only our planet but the whole universe may disappear and be superseded by something else, and God will continue. But since God, like all living things, only perfectly, embodies the principle of internal relations, God’s life depends on there being some world to include.”[3] The authors of this “evolutionary” view of God? Two process Christian theologians, Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr.

In an interview on YouTube,[4] Sheldrake describes God as ”a being, a conscious being—as consciousness itself.” He sees God as representing the same ultimate source of all that is, like the Hindu notion of Brahman—“the ground of all being, all existence, all consciousness—the being who sustains the universe.”

Sheldrake finds meaning in both the Hindu and Christian traditions of a divine trinity. God the father, the ground of all. God the Son, the Logos, the order or form of all that is becoming. God the Spirit, the active and energetic nature of God. “Speaking involves both a flow of air and words that may be understood—a combination of Spirit and Logos. God the father is the source of both speaking and energy in the universe.” Sheldrake attends worship in the Church of England near his home and finds comfort and meaning in traditional Christian prayer, in the liturgical events of the Christian calendar, and in the sacraments.

1 https://www.sheldrake.org/.

2 Rupert Sheldrake, the Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1991, 1994), 184.

3 Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1981), 196-97.

4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WaCc_61Z90.

A 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, the Truth, and the Light, now and forever. 

Amen.