Mind as essence of a person: Mays excerpt #9

The Mays write: During an NDE, the NDEr’s sense of “self” derives from various aspects of the experience: 

They know they exist with all of their cognitive faculties, without the physical body.

They know they are the same person who lives in or out of the physical body.

They know they are the agent of their actions, feelings, and thoughts. They can choose and their intentions are immediately fulfilled.

NDErs experience that their entire being separates from the physical body and then returns to the body. During their experience, they view their physical body as separate from themselves—like an empty shell, and yet their identity—their mind or self-awareness—continues intact before, during, and after the NDE. Thus, NDErs experience their mind as the essence of their being, independent of the physical body. “That physical body wasn’t me at all!”

Summarizing the evidence that the mind is a separate entity:

NDErs experience that their entire being separates from the physical body. All aspects of their mind act as a cohesive unit and are consciously present to them throughout their NDE—their senses, thoughts, feelings, intentions, and memories.

Throughout the NDEr’s separation of their mind from the body and its return to the body, their mind is continuously self-aware. This continuity of the mind is particularly clear in cases of repeated transitions in and out of the body.

The stark contrast between the “out-of-body mind” in an NDE and the “in-body mind” includes a sense of freedom from physical constraints, the loss of physical pain and disabilities, feelings of weightlessness, sharpness of perceptions, clarity of thought, and instantaneous response to volition. There are enhanced capabilities of perception and memory formation and the view that their physical body is not their real self. During some infant and early childhood NDEs, NDErs later report their out- of-body experience was from an adult perspective. The contrast with the out-of-body mind becomes clearer with the return to the body: the NDEr feels squeezed painfully back into the physical body, with the return of heaviness, fatigue, pain, and disabilities, as well as dulled thinking, perception, and volition.

NDErs experience their mind as the essence of their being, independent of the physical body. They are the same person when out-of-body as within their physical body.

Thus, the experiences of NDErs strongly suggest that a person’s mind is a separate entity that is independent of the physical body.

Nonetheless, skeptics can object that all of this evidence is from the NDErs’ subjective experiences. We can’t see the NDEr’s out-of-body mind and the mind appears to be nonmaterial—it easily passes through solid objects, like ceilings and walls. So, is the subjective experience of the nonmaterial mind objectively real? Is there objective evidence of the existence of the nonmaterial mind entity?

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Adult minds and body reactions: Mays excerpts #8

The Mays write: A surprising number of people who had their NDEs during infancy or early childhood report that they were “adults” during their NDEs. Most people reporting an NDE or NDE-like experience from this early age describe the experience from an adult perspective, similar to having an adult mind in a child’s body. 

P.M.H. Atwater

For example, NDE investigator P.M.H. Atwater quotes from the case of Vicky:

“I remember being able to leave my body, fly around the room, and being pulled back into my body. ... [My dad would] tickle me under my chin. It made me laugh so hard I would fly up through the top of my head and out of my body. From the ceiling I’d look back at my little body on the couch. ... I could see my mom in the kitchen ironing something on the ironing board. I could see the whole house while soaring around. ... While I was out I wanted to stay out, but something always pulled me back. It was as if there were two parts of me. One aspect was me as the baby. And the other aspect was me with an adult mind. While I was out of my body I was me—but older, wiser, much more knowledgeable. When I returned to my baby body, it was as if I forgot that other aspect of myself.”

NDE-like experiences such as Vicky’s can occur even when the person is not near death but score on the NDE Scale as valid NDEs. In Vicky’s case, she described being out-of-body, having perceptions out of the line of physical sight, and being forced to return to her body. Most significantly, she described her out-of-body mind as being a fully mature, adult mind that was an older, wiser, and more knowledgeable version of herself. These qualities were lost when returning to her body. Vicky’s in-and-out experience is reminiscent of Joe McMoneagle’s yo-yo-like experience.

When NDErs report seeing their own physical body, they view it differently: Their body is not part of who they are. They typically view their body with disinterest, disdain, or even disgust. Their physical body generally appears as an empty shell, like an old, discarded coat. For Mary Neal, her body “looked like the shell of a comfortable old friend.”

And when NDErs experience their return to the physical body, the contrast between their expanded out-of- body mind and the coarse physical body becomes even more obvious. Their expanded mind needs to be squeezed back into the body. Consider NDEr Erica McKenzie’s experience as her out-of-body mind rejoined her physical body:

“It was my body but I also knew the real me was not attached to that body. I honestly didn’t think I could shove myself back into what had once felt so familiar, but now I identified as foreign. I knew reintegrating was going to be overwhelming and painful. That body wasn’t me! ... It was too confining and claustrophobic to even consider trying to stuff myself inside it. There must be another solution, but I couldn’t think of one. ... In a split second, I was shoved back into my limp body like a hand in a glove, only the glove was too small. Each part of my spiritual body squeezed its way into my physical counterpart. I could feel my spiritual big toe fit back into the spot of my physical big toe along with each one of my fingers, my hands, feet, arms and legs. My body felt heavy and confined as if I’d been zipped inside a jacket two sizes too small. All the feelings attached to my sick and exhausted body assaulted my spiritual one. My chest hurt along with the rest of me. This was an enormous let down from the light-filled vastness of Spirit I had just experienced. It wasn’t me at all! I had lived as a multidimensional being, basking in the love of God’s presence only to be forced back into the stark reality of a 3-dimensional body. How could I possibly go back to that?”

When NDErs experience being reunited with the physical body, pain returns. Each time Joe McMoneagle was reunited with his body, he felt tremendous pain, but he felt no pain while out-of-body. Any prior physical disabilities also return.

On return to the body, the NDEr typically feels heaviness, fatigue, and physical sluggishness. Compared to experiences during an NDE, the physical body evidently dampens and dulls thinking and perceptions and constrains movement. Erica McKenzie’s body felt heavy and confined, and her pain returned when her “spiritual body” was shoved back into and reintegrated with her “3-dimensional body.” The NDEr experiences their consciousness—their mind—coming back to the limitations of their physical body.

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Character of consciousness: Mays excerpt #7

The Mays write: It is important to note that the transitions in and out of the body were triggered by repeated external events. Joe McMoneagle was repeatedly catapulted back to his body each time his friend violently struck him in the center of his chest. Mary Neal was drawn back to her body by the compassion she felt for her friends when they repeatedly pleaded with her to take a breath.

We can infer that the momentary resumption of the heartbeat can compel the NDEr back to their body. Joe McMoneagle briefly reunited with his body when he was struck in the chest. Laurin Bellg’s patient Howard “got jerked back to [his] body with a jolt” on the first defibrillation shock and then floated up again. Other NDErs appear to be drawn to return to the body out of the ties of love and compassion for others—Mary Neal for her kayaking friends and Tony Meo (Section 2D) for his wife and his family.

Throughout these cases, the NDEr experiences a continuity of consciousness, but their perspective changes from out-of-body to in-body. The body momentarily starts to function again: Joe was briefly looking up through his physical eyes and Mary was able to lay down in her body, take a breath, and then resume her heavenly journey.

Throughout the NDEr’s experience of the separation of their mind from the body and its return to the body, the mind holds a continuity of wakeful self-awareness. The unity of the mind is demonstrated most clearly in these cases of repeated transitions in and out of the body. Because there is a seamless transition of consciousness in leaving the body and then returning, it is evident that mediation by the brain does not alter the identity or unity of the mind.

There is a stark contrast between one’s experience of the “out-of-body mind” in an NDE and the “in-body mind” in ordinary consciousness. In the out-of-body state, NDErs feel no bodily pain, even when painful medical procedures are being performed on their physical body. Prior physical defects or disabilities such as blindness, deafness, lameness, or missing limbs are absent in most NDErs. NDErs who are blind or visually impaired, including those blind from birth, reported being able to see while out-of-body during their NDEs, and in some cases their perceptions were independently corroborated.

In the NDEr’s experience, the mind appears to operate as if it has been freed from the normal constraints of the physical body, with loss of pain and disabilities, feelings of weightlessness, sharpness of perceptions, clarity of thought, and instantaneous response to volition, as with NDEr Tony Meo traveling 1,250 miles back to this home.

When out-of-body, NDErs also experience enhanced visual perceptions, enhanced memory formation, and a heightened sense of reality:

During the out-of-body state, vision appears to be a special form of perception. NDErs report a kind of “wraparound” vision involving simultaneous 360° vision on all sides of an object, through it, and within it, or “vision from everywhere.” NDE researcher Jean-Pierre Jourdan cited the account of French NDEr JM:

“I was surprised that I could see at a 360° angle: I could see in front and behind me, I could see underneath, I could see far away, I could see up close and also transparently. I remember seeing a stick of lipstick in one of the nurses’ pockets. If I wanted to see inside the lamp which illuminated the room, I’d manage to do so, and all of this instantly, as soon as I wanted to. ... I could see, all at once, a green plaque with white letters saying, ‘Manufacture de Saint Etienne [a city in France].’ The plaque was under the edge of the operating table, covered up by the drape I was lying on. I could see with multiple axes of vision, from many places at once. This is the reason why I saw this plaque under the operating table, from a completely different angle, since I was up there by the ceiling and I still managed to see this plaque located under the table, itself covered by a sheet. When I wanted to check this, the surgeon and I realized the plaque was actually there and read ‘Manufacture d’armes de Saint Etienne’.”

Jourdan proposed that the unusual qualities of visual perception in NDEs suggest that the NDEr perceives the physical world “from a point located in an additional dimension—and therefore external to normal human space-time. ... [A] distinctive five-dimensional spatiotemporal perspective seems to be the case in NDEs.”

NDErs’ memory of the events of their NDEs are very vivid and are indelible upon returning to the body. Their accounts don’t fade and are not embellished over time, even after decades (18). Three separate studies of NDEr memories showed that NDErs remember being actively involved in the events and actually perceiving the phenomena. When recalling their NDE, the NDEr “relives” the experience. The memories formed of the NDE are more vivid—more real—than memories of real events.

Finally, the general consensus among NDErs is that their experiences while out-of-body are much more real than experiences of ordinary reality:

“A man who rolled his car over at the age of 21 said, ‘I have no doubt that this experience was real. It was vastly more real than anything we experience here.’ A woman who attempted suicide at the age of 31 said, ‘This was more real than anything on Earth. By comparison, my life in my body had been a dream.’ And a woman who, at the age of 25, bled out during a surgical procedure when the surgeon accidentally cut an artery, noted: ‘What happens during an NDE happens in the realm of truth, in the true reality, and what happens here on Earth is just a dream’.”

These enhanced capabilities evidently occur when the NDEr’s out-of-body mind is not constrained by brain function. The enhanced vision—seeing accurately from all directions at once and seeing through objects—is certainly not possible with physical vision. In the referenced studies, the characteristics of the memories formed in NDEs were found to be amplified compared to memories formed in ordinary consciousness of real events, which suggests that the NDE memory formation was not tied to brain function. 

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Consciousness outside the body: Mays excerpt #6

The Mays write: Numerous aspects of an NDE show how the mind functions independent of the physical body.

The mind appears to be a cohesive unit during an NDE. NDErs’ reports indicate that all of their normal cognitive faculties are active during the NDE. NDEr perceptions include all normal sense faculties: sight, hearing, and less frequently, touch, smell, and taste. Perceptions of physical objects and events are accurate. NDErs are fully self-aware and retain all of their prior knowledge. Their thoughts are clear and reasoned (e.g., Howard wondered whether maybe he should “go somewhere”. NDErs exhibit the normal range of feelings (e.g., peace, love, joy, wonder, bewilderment, fear, frustration, irritation). Their intentions are immediately fulfilled (e.g., Tony Meo “just wanted to go home” and suddenly he was back in Florida. During their NDE, NDErs nearly always recall existing memories of prior life events; and during their NDE, new vivid memories of their NDE are formed. The NDEr’s self separates and reunites with the physical body as a unit.

The NDEr experiences that their entire being has separated from the physical body and that all aspects of their mind or self are still consciously present to them throughout their NDE—their senses, thoughts, feelings, intentions, and memories. The NDEr’s self-conscious awareness remains intact while out-of-body. NDErs feel themselves to be the same persons throughout the experience. The continuity of self-conscious awareness is demonstrated in cases in which the NDEr shifts from out-of-body to in-body repeatedly, like a yo-yo. Here are two cases:

NDEr Joe McMoneagle reported that during his NDE from convulsions, he was out of his body observing his friend trying to revive him. Finding no pulse, his friend struck him in the chest periodically—not as in CPR, which was not widely practiced at the time, in 1970.

“Not finding [a pulse, my friend] began to violently strike me in the chest, cursing me to breathe with each punch. The interesting thing I experienced through all of this was that every time he struck me in the center of the chest, I would feel a click and find myself looking up through my physical eyes into his. This would immediately be followed by another distinct click, and once more I would be out of my body and looking down at him from above. After 10 minutes of this, I was beginning to feel like a yo-yo. Click—pain, click—no pain, click—pain, click—no pain, click ... and so forth and so on. As he continued striking me in the chest, I began screaming at him with my mind while in the out-of-body state to stop this nonsense, can’t you see I’m dead, leave me alone! Until eventually he did stop and I remained outside of my body.”

Orthopedist Mary Neal drowned in a river during a kayaking trip. Her body was severely injured as the force of the water ripped her out of the kayak. Her kayaking friends retrieved her body—after 30 minutes under water—and started CPR. In her NDE, she rose out of her body and was greeted by deceased relatives and other spiritual companions. As she proceeded on a path to heaven, she could look down on her kayaking friends trying to resuscitate her body on the riverbank.

“My body looked like the shell of a comfortable old friend, and I felt warm compassion and gratitude for its use. ... I heard [my friends] call to me and beg me to take a breath. I loved them and did not want them to be sad, so I asked my heavenly companions to wait while I returned to my body, lay down, and took a breath. Thinking that this would be satisfactory, I then left my body and resumed my journey home.” [Her kayaking friends kept beckoning to her to come back and take a breath.] “Each time ... I felt compelled to return to my body and take another breath before returning on my journey. This became tiresome and I grew quite irritated with their repeated calling. ... Before we could go inside [the hall, my spiritual companions] ... turned to me and explained that it was not my time to enter the hall; I had not completed my journey on earth, had more work to do, and must return to my body. ... [T]hey returned me to the river bank. I sat down in my body and gave these heavenly beings, these people who had come to guide, protect, and cheer for me, one last, longing glance before I lay down and was reunited with my body. I became aware of my body and opened my eyes to see the faces of [my friends] looking down at me.”

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

What do the NDE cases mean? Mays excerpt #5

See for more cases.

The Mays write: The evidence from these three cases—and many additional cases of veridical NDEr perceptions—support the idea that some part of the human being—the mind or spirit—has actually separated from the physical body and has perceived events in the physical realm from a vantage point outside the body while the brain was fully anesthetized or was completely inactive. The perceptions occur in real time and are completely accurate. In these cases, no physical explanations hold up to scrutiny.

The experiences in the NDE—the perceptions of the physical realm—are real—for the following reasons:

The perceptions of the physical realm are veridical, that is, they are accurate and have been verified by a credible third party.

The veridical perceptions occur from the NDEr’s reported vantage point outside the physical body, generally from above, near or bobbing against the ceiling. The NDEr can be distant from the NDEr’s body: down the hall, on a different floor, or many miles away:

During emergency open heart surgery while out of town some 1,250 miles from his home, Tony Meo’s heart stopped for 30 minutes. During his OBE NDE, he thought about his wife and found himself in the surgical waiting room and saw her on the phone crying. Then “he thought he ‘just wanted to go home to Florida’ and suddenly he was there! While home in Florida he ‘saw’ all of the mail which had been taken in by the housesitter, strewn all over the dining room table.” He saw a Danish office supply catalog lying there. In the transcendental part of his NDE, Tony had a life review and was asked if he wanted to go back. Tony said yes because his wife, Pat, and his family needed him. After he had recovered, Tony and Pat returned home. They found that Tony had “accurately described all of the letters, bills, junk mail, and magazines,” including the Danish catalog, which they had never written away for.

The objects or events accurately perceived are unusual or idiosyncratic—Al Sullivan’s doctor flapping his arms; Lloyd Rudy’s patient seeing the two surgeons in their short sleeves in the OR doorway and the chain of Post It notes; Howard examining the nurse-training center. The NDEr’s description is frequently of a detailed, purely visual event or an unusual object. The events or objects are unfamiliar to the NDEr and are unlikely to be guessed or inferred from the circumstances.

These purely visual perceptions could not have occurred by physical sight—they were beyond the reach of physical senses, either because physical sight was blocked (Al Sullivan’s and Rudy’s patient’s eyes were taped shut; and Howard’s training center was on the floor above), or the unusual events occurred while brain function had stopped (Rudy’s patient and Howard were both in cardiac arrest).

Often the veridical perceptions are immediately disclosed by the NDEr, such that they could not have been told to the NDEr by someone else or a memory that the NDEr subconsciously fabricated from information acquired later.

The timing of specific idiosyncratic events reported by the NDEr can establish what the NDEr’s level of brain function was. In some cases, it is clear—beyond reasonable doubt—that the perceptions could not have been produced by the brain, yet the NDEr correctly identified the sequence and details of the unfolding event. For example, several NDErs have been able accurately to describe the start of their resuscitation procedure after cardiac arrest; Lloyd Rudy’s patient accurately described the two doctors standing in the OR doorway after he had been declared dead for at least 20 minutes and before his resuscitation had started.

Because the NDEr’s perceptions are verified as accurate, the NDEr’s experiences in the physical realm are real. The fact that the NDEr’s perceptual viewpoint—the line of sight—is reported outside the physical body strongly suggests that the NDEr’s mind or consciousness has somehow separated from the body during the NDE and is in a different location. The fact that NDErs have accurate perceptions without the mediation of the brain suggests that the mind operates independent of the body.

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Perception at a distance: Mays excerpt #4

A skeptic can object that Dr. Rudy’s patient was in the same room as the two surgeons and may have had some perceptions from residual brain function, even after 20 minutes. However, there are numerous cases in which the NDEr perceives unusual objects and events at a distance from the physical body—in an adjacent room, down the hallway, on another floor of the building, or hundreds of miles away.

Critical care physician Laurin Bellg’s patient, Howard, suffered a cardiac arrest while recovering from surgery in the ICU. Bellg was the physician in charge during the resuscitation. Howard was completely unconscious but was resuscitated by several defibrillation shocks and was put on a ventilator.

Howard related that he shot out of the top of his head, “I’m looking down on my body and it feels like I’m bobbing and bouncing against the ceiling.” With the thought that maybe he was to go somewhere, “I felt myself rising up through the ceiling and it was like I was going through the structure of the building. I could feel the different densities of passing through insulation. I saw wiring, some pipes and then I was in this other room. It looked like a hospital but ... it was very quiet ... like there was no one there. There were [people in beds that] looked like mannequins and they had IVs hooked up to them but they didn’t look real. In the center was an open area that looked like a collection of workstations with computers.”

Right above his ICU room is a nurse-training center with simulated hospital rooms, with medical mannequins on some of the beds, and in the center, a collection of workspaces with computers. Dr. Bellg and the attending nurse were astonished at the accuracy of Howard’s description and because the presence of the nurse-training center was not generally known, even by non-nursing staff.

Howard continued, “I wasn’t there long before I got jerked back to my body with a jolt and then floated up again. As I floated up this time, I heard someone say, ‘Turn up the juice’ and then ‘Okay, charge.’ ... Then I saw the things they put on your chest to shock you like you see on TV, and I saw my body jump right after someone said, “Everybody clear.” These perceptions were all completely accurate. Howard was jerked back on the first defibrillation shock. As Bellg recounted, the first shock had not worked and “right away I said, ‘Let’s turn up the juice. ... Okay, charge.’”

Howard’s heart was finally brought back in normal rhythm. He was intubated and remained under sedation for several days after the resuscitation. When he was finally weaned off the ventilator, he was able to talk and related a number of additional veridical details of the resuscitation, for example, Bellg’s specific comments when putting the intubation tube in.

Howard’s numerous veridical visual and auditory perceptions occurred during cardiac arrest and resuscitation while his heart was still stopped. They were verified immediately after his ventilator was removed, in his first telling, including accurate details of unusual objects—in the training center on the floor above the ICU—which were clearly out of his physical line of sight. Notably, Howard reports feeling “the different densities of passing through insulation.” NDErs frequently report easily floating above their physical body, bobbing against the ceiling, and easily moving through solid objects such as walls and ceilings, sometimes feeling a slight resistance or a change in density in the process

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Are NDEs real? Mays excerpt #3

How can we check that the experiences in an NDE are real? For one thing, we can check the parts of an NDE that relate to events in the physical realm. Do the NDEr’s perceptions of physical events during the NDE match what actually happened, according to other witnesses? Yes, in many NDE cases, the NDEr’s perceptions of physical events were verified as completely accurate. Typically, the NDEr’s brain function at the time was severely compromised by deep anesthesia, coma, or cardiac arrest. In many of these cases, the NDEr’s perceptions were impossible to perceive by ordinary means because the NDEr’s vision was blocked or the events occurred at a distant location.

Dozens of such cases, verified by independent sources, are documented in The Self Does Not Die. Al Sullivan had emergency cardiac bypass surgery, during which his eyes were taped shut and he was anesthetized. A surgical drape over his head blocked any possible physical perception of the surgeon, Dr. Takata. During the surgery, Sullivan experienced floating above his body, looking down on the surgery. He noticed that Takata seemed to be “flapping” his arms as if to fly. Immediately after he had recovered, Sullivan told his cardiologist, Dr. LaSala, of this unusual behavior. Takata had the habit of placing his hands on his chest to avoid contaminating them and pointing with his elbows when he needed to direct his surgical assistants. Both LaSala and Takata could not explain how Sullivan could have known of this behavior, with Sullivan being under deep anesthesia, with his physical eyesight blocked, and Takata’s behavior involving no sound or touch—perceivable only through a visual process.

Sullivan accurately described seeing Dr. Takata’s idiosyncratic movements while he was under total anesthesia, with his eyes taped shut and his head behind a surgical drape. Sullivan immediately told cardiologist LaSala about Takata’s unusual movements whose response was, “Who told you that?” Sullivan responded that he had seen it himself from above his body in the operating room during his NDE. But Sullivan should not have been able to perceive the surgeon’s movements. The doctors have no explanation for this. Takata said in an interview, “Frankly, I don’t know how this case can be accounted for. But since this really happened, I have to accept it as a fact. I think we should always be humble to accept the fact.”

A skeptic can object to the case of Al Sullivan because Sullivan was merely under anesthesia and there are cases of “anesthesia awareness” in which the patient is aware during surgery but cannot move or speak. In Sullivan’s case, Takata’s movements were unusual, purely visual events that could not be seen because Sullivan’s eyes were taped shut and were behind a surgical drape blocking sight of the operating area. There was no way for Sullivan to perceive Takata’s flapping arms, even if Sullivan were completely awake with his eyes open, because his vision would have been blocked by the surgical drape.

Skeptics can also object because Sullivan wasn’t close to death during the operation—his brain was still functioning, even though he was unconscious under anesthesia. They may say there might be some currently unknown brain function that would support such perceptual abilities. However, there are dozens of cases of verified veridical perceptions during an NDE occurring during cardiac arrest when all brain function has ceased.

For instance, cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy operated on a patient to replace a heart valve. After the surgery, Rudy could not get the patient off the heart-lung machine and restart his heart. After numerous failed attempts to wean him off the machine, the patient was declared dead. The life-sustaining machines were turned off, except for the heart echo-probe and other monitoring instruments. The patient had no heartbeat, no blood pressure, and no respiration for at least 20–25 minutes. During this time, Rudy and assistant surgeon Roberto Cattaneo stood in the OR doorway in their short-sleeve shirts discussing how they might have done the procedure differently. Then the patient’s heart spontaneously started beating again and developing blood pressure. Rudy called the surgical team back and they eventually resuscitated the patient who remained in a coma for two days in the ICU. The patient recovered with no neurological deficit and later reported having an NDE and floating above the scene in the OR. He recounted several accurate veridical perceptions during this time. In particular, he reported seeing the two surgeons standing and talking in the OR doorway in their shirt sleeves, with their arms folded, and seeing Post-It notes stuck together in a chain on a computer screen. The notes were telephone messages for the doctors that had been added after the surgery started.

Rudy commented, “He described the scene—things that there’s no way he could know. ... So what does that tell you? Was that his soul up there? ... It always makes me very emotional.” Cattaneo also commented, “The patient’s description of his experience is as Dr. Rudy described it word by word. People should interpret this according to their own beliefs, these are the facts.” In a later interview, Cattaneo remarked, “My role was that of assistant surgeon. I was in the case from beginning to end. I did witness the entire case and everything that my partner Dr. Rudy explained. I do not have a rational scientific explanation to explain this phenomenon. I do know that this happened. This patient had close to 20 minutes or more of no life, no physiological life, no heartbeat, no blood pressure, no respiratory function whatsoever and then he came back to life. Moreover, he recovered fully. ... This was not a hoax, no way, this was as real as it gets. ... One can believe what one wants to believe but this in my mind is a miracle unexplainable by current scientific knowledge.”

The evidence is clear that Rudy’s patient had died. There was no heartbeat, no blood pressure, and no respiratory function for 20–25 minutes, as indicated by the monitors which had been left on. The doctors pronounced the patient dead and told his wife that he had died. The patient’s chest was closed up briefly and prepped for postmortem exam.

When the heart stops, there is no blood flow to the brain. The brain electrical activity and brain function that are dependent on this blood flow cease after 10–20 seconds. Yet Lloyd Rudy’s patient experienced a vivid NDE while his heart had completely stopped. Although his eyes were taped shut, he later reported perceiving veridical details of the doctors and the OR that were later verified by the two surgeons. The unusual purely visual events the patient perceived included the two doctors standing in the OR doorway in their shirt sleeves and the Post-It notes stuck to the computer screen. These perceptions occurred from a vantage point near the ceiling during the time there was no brain electrical activity.

How could a patient with no brain function have accurate perceptions from a location outside the physical body? This case and many others similar to it suggest that the perceptual, cognitive and memory aspects of the mind can operate outside the body, independent of brain function.

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.