ELDVs of hurting others: Kerr excerpt #13

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams or visions of relationships with relatives, friends, and victims of the patient's violence:   

End-of-life experiences do not always occur in a context of love, togetherness and seeming purity of mind or intent however. In fact, they occur irrespective of the life led or rather as an extension of it. While devoid of judgment, the capstone they provide is in keeping with the type of existence each individual lived: people die the same way they lived. In Dwayne’s case, a 48- year-old patient who was dying of throat cancer after a lifetime of substance abuse, the end-of- life experiences that would bring him to consciousness were as violent as the life he had led.

The Dwayne we admitted to the Hospice inpatient unit was a puzzle: he was charming, funny, sociable, warm, and completely unfazed by the life of delinquency and crime from which his disease provided a reprieve. He had lived “ripping and running” as he put it, but his demeanor was that of a person with a clear conscience. He was not known as a violent man, even though he had killed two men in self-defense. And although the courts acquitted him on both counts, it was hard to reconcile his past deeds with the casual nonchalance that was now his trademark. He acted as if his actions did not define who he was.

Despite his weakened bodily condition, he jigged and jogged when he shuffled across the hallway floors, even as he had to lean on his medical walker for support. He would say things like “everything is gonna be ok man, God loves you” or “We are on a roll man, we can go to the mountain”. And with his inimitable cheerful and beaming smile, he would add “but I may need another cold one”. It did not take long for me to understand that his casual manner was actually a survival mechanism. If Dwayne was carefree and seemed to float on clouds made of jokes and funny asides, it was not because he didn’t care. He did not have the luxury to do so. He had spent a lifetime living on the street and relying on hard drugs to counter the stress, fear and pain that came hand in hand with it. His life had been about substance abuse since he was 16 years old. The only thing that mattered was scoring the next hit and avoiding the dull and numb feelings that overtook him when the effects wore off.

For Dwayne, the drug detoxification that came from being physically confined with terminal illness did not change his outlook on life. His survival instincts remained in high gear, all the more so since he was terrified at the prospect of being sent back to “the street,” a place overrun with malevolent and violent people, constant threats, injustice, crime, fear, and pure terror. The Dwayne who arrived at Hospice could not look back. Resurrecting the past was too risky an endeavor for a man who had finally reached a place of safety and physical comfort. It would have meant processing the irreconcilable, the abandonment, hunger, injustice and murder.

In avoiding his demons, Dwayne was experiencing end of life much as he had lived, by guarding himself from the shame and guilt that overcame him were he to glance back at his failures and crimes. It was ultimately his distressing ELDVs that would bring him the awakening and awareness he needed, albeit just under the wire. In his most troubled dreams, Dwayne was grabbed and stabbed at the site of his cancer: “It was like I was fighting somebody. I probably done something wrong to somebody on the street in the past, and now they caught up with me, and now they know my symptoms. It was like they were jigging the knife, trying to cut off my neck where the cancer was at. That is how I was feeling. It stopped but I still couldn’t let my shoulders down, I was in pain”. Dwayne experienced this violent dream as an avenging attempt on his life.

When he told the attending nurse about his stabbing nightmare, she reassured him that this was probably nothing, since “a lot of people talk in their sleep”. But Dwayne would not have any of it. “No, this was real,” he insisted. The nurse inquired if he needed some medication, and he nodded “because this nightmare I just had was hurting my neck anyway”. Hearing him describe the real-life effects of a wound that was inflicted in an ELDV was one of the most heartrending illustrations of the concept of “total pain” described by Hospice pioneer Dr. Cicely Saunders. It dawned on me that the dying patient’s pain was even more multidimensional than originally conceived: it includes not just psychological or emotional turmoil but also physical pain. And ELDVs strike such a cord in the patient near death that the very line between bodily reality and the spiritual world comes undone in the process.

Dwayne’s recurring dreams and visions led to a radical shift in his demeanor and attitude at life’s end. This became clearer when Dwayne was filmed for the documentary on end-of-life experiences (Link to Dwayne Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B05llRYXeI). He was on camera and was just about to tell us about his recurring dream when the man whose sashaying and quipping was legendary at Hospice, started sobbing uncontrollably. Nothing used to faze the Dwayne we knew, everything was cause for laughter, and here he was, an unrecognizably vulnerable soul who was crying, trembling, and shaking, while talking in an unbroken stream of tears and words we could neither interrupt nor bear to hear. It was the distress with which Dwayne was sharing his end-of-life experience that was overwhelming. Dwayne was finally allowing himself to confront rather than evade. He was now a soul in search of redemption, talking about his cancer as karma and regretting his life of ‘ripping and running’: “One thing I do know is I hurt a lot of people and I feel bad about doing it, you know, very bad and I just hope and pray that they do forgive me because they see what influence I was under at the time when I was trying to scheme and scam and be sick with them.... I am not gonna lie to you, I have used drugs in my past, that is not a good thing man, ... I don’t want to go back to that lifestyle. It is not good for you, it is not good for me.... And I just pray to my higher power that he keeps me away from it with the help of my peers, hospice, you know, I am not really gonna say friends in the street. I had no friends because 95-98% of my friends were doing the same thing I was doing.”

Dwayne was facing his day of reckoning. He went on to have variations of this recurring dream, recounting that “the guy was pouring acid down my neck, burning a hole in my neck.... It is because my past is coming back at me from doing wrong. Because I am not gonna say I am a perfect guy when out there because I was ripping and running the street doing wrong to individuals, I should not have...”. There was no doubt in Dwayne’s mind that his subjective experiences were making him pay for his past mistakes and misdeeds, and pay he was willing to do, provided he could make amends to the person he cared most about, his daughter Brittany.

Bereaved family members also benefit from the effects of their dying relative’s end-of-life experiences, sometimes years down the line. After being estranged from his daughter Brittany, Dwayne went through a transformation at the threshold of death that carried over into his daughter’s life. Indeed, their deathbed reunion and the forgiveness that flowed from their love is what would eventually help his daughter forge a commitment to turn her own life around. The incidence of drug abuse among children of drug addicts is disproportionately high, and his oldest daughter had not escaped the trend. In honor of the father who had changed the course of his life at the eleventh hour, she set out to do the same. Her dad’s love was restored to her through the coming together of consciousnesses that were once embroiled in hostility but that were now enacting a much-needed reckoning. She herself credited her father’s ELDVs for the transformation in both of their lives, and this awareness led her to a regained sense of self.

Despite a lifetime of denying certain realities of his life, Dwyane’s consciousness not only returned but did so with a vengeance. His ELDVs were more than just memories, they were well thought-out and organized processes that were not just retold but relived, and whose material and ripple effects were felt across lives and beyond his and others’ death. He was not only lucid as he experienced them but described feeling the sensation of being stabbed. The lives Dwayne had taken and tried to forget could not be forgotten. They continued to exist as part of Dwayne’s existence, within a consciousness that was shared between and across lives.

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

 

Dying wife with dead husband: Kerr excerpt #12

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams or visions of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives:  

There are times when End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs) transcend the boundary that separate the living from the dead to meet spiritual and emotional needs, those that tie couples and that restore bonds. Sometimes, ELDVs do not interrupt the reality of the bereaved so much as replace it. This often happens with elderly couples who, following a lifetime of togetherness, cannot shift to living without their other half. And so, they don’t. Instead, they maintain their unbreakable bond through and in end- of-life dreams and visions. Attention wholly switches to this other world where they go on co- existing with their deceased partner and can feel whole again. That is when bereavement does not involve a before and an after, only a different, a more so, and a with.

After Sonny’s death, Joan kept her husband alive through recurring pre-death visions that occurred in her dreams as well as when awake. Her health began to deteriorate rapidly, but her end-of-life experiences and visions helped her, as well as her family, cope with the deep wound left by Sonny’s loss. When Joan returned to her daughters’ home from the Hospice Inpatient Unit, her dreams kept Sonny alive. During many nights, Lisa and her family could hear Joan calling out to her husband: “Come get me. I miss you! Sonny, come and get me!”. The strength of these dreams would soon carry from sleep to wakefulness and Joan, fully lucid, would often claim to see Sonny in the room.

Joan and Sonny’s story exemplifies the uniqueness and the intensity with which end-of-life dreams and visions are experienced as a site of togetherness. Joan lived for two months beyond Sonny’s death but never without him. She would call out to him every night and have visions of him every day. After Joan’s death, Lisa and her family sat down for a filmed interview (Link to Sonny & Joan Family Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYnHPTmSmLo).

As seen in the film, Joan’s ELDVs not only kept Sonny present as her husband but was also shared with Lisa, their daughter and caregiver. As a result, it was only when Joan passed that her daughter finally took stock of her loss, a now double one. Lisa felt that her parents both died but only when Joan did because their consciousness was shared, whether physically present or not. She only realized the full impact of her mother’s ELDVs when her mother’s visions no longer embodied her father’s felt presence. Joan’s own consciousness had been heightened to the point that Sonny was present, not just for her but for Lisa too; this awareness was shared.

And when the time came for Joan and Sonny to be reunited and for Lisa to take stock of the reality of her double loss, the knowledge that their remarkable love story had survived death helped their daughter come to terms with her own grief and sorrow. Her bereavement process was aided by the recognition that her parents’ bond had remained unbroken thanks, in large part, to her mother’s ELDVs. 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Dreams of deceased grandpa: Kerr excerpt #11

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives: 

Sometimes a patient’s consciousness may be intact without including the kind of obvious awareness of one’s surroundings the definition of the term implies. Sometimes, a patient’s consciousness is not visible to others. This was true in the case of Sierra, a vibrant young lady who was only 28 years old when she was transferred from our local cancer hospital to our Hospice Inpatient Unit (Link to Sierra Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8NrYTyRaJI). Upon transfer, it was clear that Sierra had only days to live yet seemed in denial about the severity of her condition; there had been so little time for Sierra to process the implications of her being transferred from hospitalized treatment to Hospice. Despite unrelenting pain and a rapidly deteriorating condition, she insistently told her puzzled Hospice nurses and doctors that “I am going to beat this.”

We prioritized symptom management, but it was also urgent to help her and her family understand that her time was limited, so they could find some level of acceptance and the words to be reconciled with the reality of physical death. We were particularly concerned for her young son. We had come to understand that end-of-life dreams and visions help patients come to terms with death, but in Sierra’s case, we naturally assumed that her denial meant the absence of such experiences.

Sierra was struggling to reconcile the different realities that were clashing around her. She needed clarity about her condition so that she could acknowledge the inevitable. This was something that the science of medicine alone could not bring forth. It was also one which, unbeknownst to her caretakers, Sierra’s end-of-life experiences had already initiated. They were preparing her for the reality which her loved ones were so hesitant to put into words, and they were doing it by bypassing language altogether.

Her care team became aware of Sierra’s inner processes only after her physician, Dr. Megan Farrell, asked Sierra if she had had any dreams. Fully lucid, Sierra replied “Yes, strange dreams and they don’t always make sense. Sometimes, I don’t remember them very well” Dr. Farrell continued, “Sierra is there anyone you have been dreaming about or someone in particular who comes to you in your dreams?” A long pause ensued. With eyes half-opened, Sierra looked over her doctor’s shoulder, smiled and whispered, “Hi Grandpa!”

Sierra had been dreaming of her deceased grandpa Howard, an army veteran and a man who had loved and nurtured her. But now, in the stillness of her Hospice room, surrounded by loved ones, what Sierra’s vision represented was so much more than just a recurring dream. It was a state of being that brought clarity and made words like “dying” and “terminal illness” irrelevant. When her mother Tammy asked: “Sierra, what is grandpa saying?” Sierra answered “He says he is proud of the young woman and mother I have become... He does not want me to suffer.” We had entered the room thinking Sierra may need an intervention but were instead subjected to one, a reminder that the best lessons are often witnessed, not given.

Sierra’s experiences at the end of her life provided her with a sense of unconditional love and guidance at the threshold of death. And for her mother Tammy, that awareness helped usher the sorrow she had not given herself permission to feel. ELDVs often pull together multiple losses and consciousnesses, those that occur across generations and wide swathes of time, across the living and the dead, for the dying as well as their loved ones. As can be seen in the video, Sierra’s care team were left in awe of an unseen but powerful exchange between the living and the dead. Sierra’s grandfather reached Sierra in a way the clinical team could not. 

 

 
Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Paul's video recalling ELDVs: Kerr excerpt #10

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives:

Paul’s End-of-Life Dreams and Visions experiences capture many of the common features of ELDVs reported in our studies. This video was taken 3 weeks before his death and includes commentary from his daughter Dianne (Link to Paul Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88fJDXZ7sg4). Paul’s ELDVs were rich in detail and easily recalled. 

In Paul's ELDV, his most recurring dream was that of Joyce waving at him in her favorite light blue dress. He described how she’d given him ‘the little beauty pageant wave” to let him know that she was fine, and that he’d be fine, too. Very little was said between Paul and his wife, yet he felt her presence, her smile, and her beauty. Paul also had ELDVs that involved packing. The theme of traveling or preparing to go is evident in over 39% of our dying patients. We have also noted in our studies that patients often relive past traumatic events such as war. Paul was a veteran whose ELDV also included returning to his Basic Training days from which he awoke to comment “I don’t want to do this again”.

Paul enjoyed sharing his experiences, while his daughter Diane, a nurse, was in turn heartened to see him talk about his end-of-life dreams and “get a lot out of it... He chose to remember the positive dreams that he had so we all enjoyed always hearing about dad’s dreams... I could always take my cues from dad. If dad was comforted by those dreams, that is what I was looking for... My father’s last few days on earth were the last gift that he gave us as a father. Because of circumstances from the past, as soon as dad had a stroke four and a half days before he died, everybody raced to be there. Two of my brothers were not able to be with us when my mother had died and it was important to all [seven] of us to be there. 

"We spent four days in our childhood home, cooking for each other, taking care of dad, visiting with dad, priests came and went, family members, friends and neighbors came and went, and we were given the greatest gift to know that we were all going to be together, that dad might not be there but he brought us all together one more time and we took that with us, that was a tremendous gift he gave us... He couldn’t speak but he could smile and the light was in his eyes... he was there with us until the last couple of hours before he died.” 

Where do their minds and hearts drift when we can no longer speak and have closed our eyes? Paul’s pre-death experiences helped answer these questions and fears: he was returned to love. 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Dead relatives filling his room: Kerr excerpt #9

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives:

Frank had been admitted to the Hospice Inpatient Unit with severe congestive heart failure. At 95, he was still completely aware of his surroundings and loved a good conversation. He had collected encyclopedic bits of baseball lore the way others do treasured objects and could talk the game like no one else. Yet, despite his recall and engagement, when Frank closed his eyes to rest, his room became crowded with dead relatives. One of them was Uncle Harry who had been dead for 46 years and who “wouldn’t shut up.” This was a recurring phenomenon I now knew better than to mistake for the manifestation of a broken mind.

Like for so many of our dying patients, time was now inconsequential and what was before was now in the present while realities, whether current or past, living or dead, merged. His body was shutting down, but his mind had not lost its foothold in consciousness. In truth, he had a foot in two worlds, only one of which we shared.

Over time, Frank’s inner-world experiences returned him to what he treasured most in life, his wife’s love. The more he dreamt of her, the more he felt her presence and the more peaceful he became. He finally requested that we discontinue treatment. His decision to decline care was medically appropriate. As is so often the case, patients recognize medical futility before their physician and, in a sense, release the doctor from an obligation that can no longer be honored. Frank wanted to join “Ruthie in heaven”. We helped him reach comfort for this much-awaited reunion, and he died with the beauty and grace he had lived and created. As his organs failed, his senses, perceptions and awareness did not. In fact, they were telling Frank that his soul was in fact very much alive. In contrast to the notion of “raging against the dying of the light”, Frank, like most of our patients, was fighting towards not against. The “towards’ he was drawn to resided within his ELDV, a renewed consciousness warmed in familiar love. This was where he was now experiencing “life”, beyond his physical boundaries. 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Consciousness awakened in dying patient: Kerr excerpt #8

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives: Ryan, a fifty-one-year-old Protestant with metastatic colorectal cancer, initially worried “am I losing my mind? I haven’t seen some of these people in years.” But when his dreams and visions ceased in correlation with clinical improvement, he sighed: “I am back... I miss the other stuff.”

Ryan had never married, and never moved out of the neighborhood in which he had been raised. By any measure, he had experienced limited success in his career but found tremendous joy in life’s simple pleasures and dependable affections. He had a loyal group of friends, most of whom he knew from childhood. He loved the 1970’s, the music and culture that had shaped his youth, and he had shown no inclination to move beyond that decade. His point of reference had remained safely anchored in a past of rock and roll--a virtual time capsule.

Now dying, he dreamed of deceased friends with whom he was going to concerts; he revisited the weekly garage sales through which they had casually roamed, mostly looking for old record albums; they went fishing in the local river. At other times, he “traveled with relatives”, although he never knew where they were going. In these moments, he felt alive, unburdened by the limitations of his illness. The physical complications that came with dying had been an affront to Ryan because they had compromised his socially active lifestyle. It took re-experiencing freedom in his end-of-life dreams for him to reach acceptance. Now, despite his physical decline, he again felt the warmth of familiarity and cheerful living that had defined his social life, one rich with friends, music, and small adventures.

This was Ryan’s consciousness awakened, his awareness and perceptions heightened through the connectivity he was re-experiencing. Now his acuity was sharpened and centered on what had defined his existence in health, his relationships. This was no memory or nostalgia for times gone by, but rather a satisfying, lived experience he could not wait to rejoin, again and again. 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Reuniting with dead loved ones: Kerr excerpt #7

After several years of studying the subjective experiences of the dying, we began to question the common perception of dying as a passive process leading to emptiness and finality. We were now intrigued by the notion that dying was not about a “fading of the light” but may instead represent a period of remarkable growth for the patient. We conducted a study that asked if experiencing ELDVs affected patients’ post-traumatic growth, or the positive psychological changes that can occur during or after trauma. Here, the trauma for patients is forgoing curative treatment and entering hospice, as accepting one’s impending death is undoubtedly a traumatic event. Could ELDVs change the amount of post-traumatic growth felt by a dying individual?

In this study, patients experiencing ELDVs generally scored higher in every category of post-traumatic growth than patients who were not having ELDVs. The most significant differences were in personal strength, spiritual change, and overall post-traumatic growth. This means that patients with ELDVs showed greater strength and resilience, forged a deeper spiritual and existential connection, and generally exhibited greater positive change. In other words, patients do not stop living because they are dying. This definition of “living” defies physical form and instead occurs when eyes are closed, and brains are fading. The inner world of the dying patients, defined more by mind than brain function, appears to thrive in dimensions unseen.

Having reviewed the data above, this section will provide a series of case examples drawn from our formal studies. The facts and numbers presented from our studies cannot fully capture what is a deeply human experience, as unique as each individual experiencing the End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs). Ultimately, the specific meaning and experience of ELDVs need to be understood on an individual basis and within the context of the life that was led. These cases studies are not only significant in number but share remarkably similar qualities. At end of life, consciousness heightens and reveals an existence that is ultimately not defined by a before or an after death but instead connects us to those who have died and continue to exist through, with as well as within us.

The sample cases below will move from more to less representative examples, to reveal the extent to which the continued presence of consciousness after death can be observed irrespective of the patient’s background, age, or variations in cognition.

Of the over 1500 patient/families interviewed, few could be more representative than Bridget, an 81-year-old devoted Lutheran grandmother who suffered from chronic obstructive lung disease.

Bridget was so uneasy about the implications of her ELDVs that she grew increasingly, and uncharacteristically, quiet. When her dreams became so vivid that they seemed to blend into her awake state, she repeatedly asked, “why am I seeing this? Am I going crazy?” Bridget’s daughter, herself uncertain, did not know what to say. 

Bridget shared her recurring dream of two deceased aunts who were standing and watching over her. These experiences were followed by visions of her mother, dressed in a long, luminous white dress and sitting at the dining room table, crocheting. Although without voice, this motherly figure was a powerfully felt presence. Bridget could not come to terms with what she herself described as her “visions.” They created somewhat of a crisis of faith since at life’s end, she could not reconcile what she saw with the precepts of her religion. She had expected to see angels, not dead people. Like so many, the deceased return to the dying in a way that feels as though they were never gone but waiting to reunite at the appointed hour. As with most patients, such reunions feel not only needed but right. Bridget’s consciousness was not only vibrant, defined by love but was now shared with those she loved most. These were the relationships that had defined her in life. The reunion of the deceased with the dying suggests that consciousness, beyond our physical existence, may be shared or unifying. As Fenwick postulates, in this way consciousness appears to act as a filter, one that arises and opens up towards the end of life.

The weight of the world was lifted off of Bridget’s shoulders when we explained to her how common these end-of-life dreams and visions were, that what was happening to her was no anecdotal oddity but a recognized and studied phenomenon. It helped to cite the results of our study: that the vast majority of our patients, nearly 90% in fact, had reported at least one end-of-life experience during their enrollment in our research. From that point on, Bridget became so comfortable discussing her end-of-life experiences that she delighted in telling us that spirits like to follow the living, especially disbelieving people.

When patients have their pre-death dreams and visions validated, life’s end can become a journey toward a transformed state, often of wholeness regained. Our study confirmed that ELDVs help patients connect and reconnect to who they were, those they loved and who loved them back. They become a way of preserving or resurrecting the integrity of the self. Within the words of our dying patients were illuminating stories of deeper meaning, an inner journey through which selves were honored, wounds were healed, and bonds restored. For many, this meant reuniting with those who loved them best and whom they needed most. 

 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.