Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (3 page)

I was impressed by the work of Moody and many other early NDE researchers but still very surprised at the lack of even more extensive research. After all, isn’t humankind’s most sought after answer the one to the question
Do we survive bodily death?
I began to wonder if I myself should become involved in researching these fascinating, seemingly other- world journeys.

Then something happened that helped me decide.

A friend of mine from undergraduate days returned to Iowa for a visit, and we got together for dinner so I could meet his new wife. Before long, my friend’s wife began to talk about her allergies, which turned out to be varied and quite severe—so severe, in fact, that at one point she had a severe allergic reaction while under general anesthesia and “coded” on the operating table.

As she talked about her heart stopping, she had no fear in her voice, just a sense of wonder. I decided to probe a little.

“That’s odd,” I said. “I have heard my patients talk about facing death, but not with that tone of voice.”

The table fell silent. It was clear that I had stumbled onto something. I looked around and struggled to ask the question that was on my mind.

“Did anything happen to you when you coded on that table?” I asked.

Her immediate and emphatic response was “Why, yes!” And right there, in this dimly lit restaurant on a frigid winter’s night in Iowa City, I heard my first in-person near-death experience.

I have always suffered from multiple allergies.
⁷
This was merely a lifelong nuisance until that fateful day that my allergies became a much greater threat to my life. I told the surgeon and anesthesiologist about all my allergies. This was elective surgery and not an emergency. In spite of the medical team doing everything they could, I had a severe allergic reaction to a medication during the operation. This allergic reaction was so severe that my heart stopped.

Immediately after my heart stopped I found myself at ceiling level. I could see the EKG machine I was hooked to. The EKG was flatlined. The doctors and nurses were frantically trying to bring me back to life. The scene below me was a near-panic situation. In contrast to the chaos below, I felt a profound sense of peace. I was completely free of any pain. My consciousness drifted out of the operating room and moved into a nursing station. I immediately recognized that this was the nursing station on the floor where I had been prior to my surgery. From my vantage point near the ceiling, I saw the nurses bustling about performing their daily duties.

After I watched the nurses a while, a tunnel opened up. I was drawn to the tunnel. I then passed through the tunnel and became aware of a bright light at the end of the tunnel. I felt peaceful. After I passed through the tunnel, I found myself in an area of beautiful, mystical light. In front of me were several of my beloved relatives who had previously died. It was a joyous reunion, and we embraced.

I found myself with a mystical being of overwhelming love and compassion. “Do you want to go back?” I was asked. I responded, “I don’t know,” which was just like my old indecisive self at the time. After further discussion, I knew the choice to return to my physical body was mine. It was a most difficult decision. I was in a realm of overwhelming love. In this realm I knew I was truly home. Finally, I returned to my body.

I awoke in the ICU over a day later. I had tubes and wires all over me. I could not talk about my profound experience. Later I returned to the floor of the hospital where I had been before surgery. Here was the nursing station I visited during my NDE. I finally worked up the courage to share what I saw during my NDE with one of the nurses. The nurse responded with a look of shock and fright. This was a Catholic hospital. Not surprisingly, a nun was sent to talk with me. I patiently explained all that I had experienced. The nun listened carefully and then declared my experience to be the “work of the devil.” You can understand my enormous reluctance to share my NDE with anyone after this.

When Sheila finished her story, there was silence around the table for some time. I don’t remember eating any more of my meal although I may have. I do remember being so astonished by the story that I fell silent as the evening wore on. What I had just heard was the most dramatic story that had ever been shared with me. Every instinct I had as a human being and a physician told me that this experience was absolutely real. In those moments my perception of the world was completely changed. I remember thinking these experiences could change my views about life, death, God, and the world we live in.

I left the restaurant that night determined to begin my own research on near-death experiences. I later devised ambitious plans to collect hundreds of near-death experience case studies and scientifically study them, to determine conclusively for myself if NDEs were reality or just phantasms of the brain.

My studies would not happen for another ten years.

The year was 1998, and I was now in Las Vegas practicing the medical specialty of radiation oncology. The nineties was the decade in which the Internet exploded. Everyone was rapidly becoming smitten with this big brain in the sky, and I was no different.

Despite the steep learning curve of building websites with primitive software and slow connections, I had decided in 1997 to build the
Radiation Oncology Online Journal
(ROOJ.com) as a way of sharing credible information about this medical specialty with the world. It took a tremendous amount of time and effort outside of my clinical practice to assemble this nonprofit website, which I maintain as a way of providing solid information to the public about cancer treatment.

By the time I completed the ROOJ site I was an expert in website computer code. Then the idea hit me: build a website that will collect near-death experience case studies. By doing this I could amass a large number of NDE stories from around the world. Working with a large number of NDEs is important because medical studies involving a large study group produce more reliable results than do those studying a small group of people.

I built on the curiosity and work of those who had gone before me. Over the ten years since I heard Sheila recount her personal story, I had stayed in close contact with research in the field of near-death studies. Hundreds of scholarly articles had been written on near-death experience, including publications in many of the world’s most prestigious medical and scientific journals. I read the works of many major NDE researchers, including those of Dr. Moody; Melvin Morse, MD; Bruce Greyson, MD; Michael Sabom, MD; and Ken Ring, PhD. I also found myself fascinated with some of the individual stories, like that of Betty Eadie
(Embraced by the Light
¹
).
All of these books relied heavily on case studies. These stories of individual NDErs fed the sense of mystery I associated with this subject.

Now I was even more interested in searching for the truth than I had been ten years earlier. The implications of these experiences were so profound that I wanted to research the subject to determine if they were truly real.

The Internet was an ideal way to carry out this research. Through a website, I could reach people around the world who were willing to share their near-death experience with others. They weren’t being paid to write about their experience and had no intention of appearing on television. They would simply tell their stories directly in their own words. I would offer a series of questions aimed at helping NDErs fully express and deeply explore their incredible experience. There would be no interviewer present to possibly guide the answers or encourage embellishment, and no time constraints. Reading their shared stories would be like reading the most intimate of diary pages. By collecting NDEs via the Internet, I could examine the content of a large number of experiences, reliably determining similarities and differences, and find out once and for all if NDEs are real or imagined.

In the past a considerable amount of research had been accomplished but often with only a few NDEs. This wasn’t the fault of the researchers. Case studies of NDEs are not easy to find. Although some research indicates that as much as 5 percent of the U.S. population has had a near-death experience, many people keep them secret or find no reason to entrust their most intimate spiritual experience with their doctor or researchers.
²

An unfortunate reason NDErs might not share their stories is the attitude of many in medicine toward these experiences. I have heard many heartbreaking stories from NDErs who shared highly accurate observations of their own resuscitations, only to have physicians dismiss their experiences as insignificant. Even though there is no reason NDErs should have any conscious awareness of their resuscitation, their accounts were given short shrift by physicians who should have marveled at their patients’ experiences rather than ridiculed them.

I spent many years serving on the board of directors of the International Association for Near-Death Studies. During our meetings I heard far too many stories of the problems NDErs encountered when they tried to tell their near-death experiences to the medical staff. One of the classic stories was a patient who told his doctor about his NDE in front of several nurses. When the patient finished telling his story, the doctor looked up from his clipboard and said, “Don’t think too much about it. It was just fantasy.”

When the doctor left the room, the nurses closed in around the crushed patient and said, “It’s not fantasy. We hear about these events all the time from patients. Doctors like him live in fantasy. They never hear these because they don’t listen to their patients.”

This was one way in which taking case studies over the Internet was superior to interviewing people directly. People who have these intimate experiences are sometimes reluctant to be interviewed in person and in a formal way about their NDE. They may feel that the interviewer isn’t sincerely interested in their experience, or they may feel awkward about sharing such an unworldly experience with others.

Responding to an Internet survey, by contrast, offers the NDEr a chance to share these remarkable events as if they are talking to themselves. Rather than being forced to overcome any discomfort they might have with an interviewer, they are comfortably recounting their own story privately, by themselves. They also can take as much time as they want. Many NDErs shared their appreciation with me after they took the survey. They found the survey helped them to accurately and comprehensively convey their experience.

This is why I felt (and still do) that an Internet survey is more effective in many ways than a face-to-face interview.

Of course, I had concerns as I put together the NDE website survey. For example, how could I tell for certain if the stories being told were valid? I pondered this question a lot and decided to rely on the tried-and-true scientific method of redundancy. Redundancy in interviewing means asking the same question (or questions that revolve around the same concept) several times in slightly different ways. For instance, in the demographic portion of the questionnaire, there is a box to check if the person had an out-of-body experience. One would expect that if this box was checked, then the answer to the question “Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?” should be “Yes.” If we find inconsistencies in a person’s answers, we can check the narrative to see what the NDEr really experienced. Later, after large numbers of NDEs were shared, I was impressed at how consistent the responses were to the redundant questions.

The NDERF Internet survey reaches NDErs who have never shared their near-death experience with another person and would be unlikely to be reached by any other methodology used to study NDEs. The NDERF survey asks, “Have you shared this experience with others?” To this question, 8.5 percent of NDErs answered “No.”

Importantly, many studies have directly compared the reliability of Internet surveys with the more traditional pencil-and-paper surveys by studying groups of people who took surveys with both methods. The consensus of these studies is that an Internet survey is as reliable as the pencil- and-paper survey method. This further validates the reliability of the NDERF survey.
³

I already knew I needed to listen carefully to the near- death experiencers, so it made sense to ask the NDErs themselves how accurate they thought the NDERF survey was. Near the end of the current website survey, I ask an important question: “Did the questions asked and information you provided so far accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?” Of 613 NDErs responding, the answers were 84.5 percent “Yes,” 8.8 percent “Uncertain,” and only 6.7 percent “No.” This is some of the strongest possible validation of the reliability of the NDERF Internet survey, from the NDErs themselves.

Finally, my background as a physician helps me determine if a life-threatening event actually happened. I use the Karnofsky scale, which is a medical scale widely used to measure closeness to death. Karnofsky scores range from 100 (no physical compromise) to 10 (moribund) to 0 (clinically dead).
⁴
I can also determine if the medical events described in the NDEs are medically plausible.

In the early days of the website, I was concerned there might be frauds or pranksters claiming to have had a near- death experience. I am glad to say this is very rare. For one thing, there is no incentive—financial or otherwise—to spend a substantial amount of time filling out the lengthy and complex survey form in order to claim a false NDE. Eventually, those trying to submit a falsified NDE discover how difficult it is to respond to a detailed survey if they have never had such an experience. In over ten years, we have uncovered fewer than ten clearly fraudulent accounts submitted on the NDERF survey form and have removed them promptly from the website and database.

I was also concerned that there might be copycat accounts, in which all or part of an NDE would be copied or plagiarized from another source. This has happened, but again very rarely. When it does, readers of the website report the copycat account, and we remove it from the site. The enormous number of visitors to the NDERF website helps assure that none of the posted NDEs are plagiarized.

I had other concerns too. Near-death experiences are complex and might be difficult for some to express in words. This is why many researchers in the past have considered them to be “ineffable,” or incapable of being expressed in words. It is not uncommon to hear an NDEr describe their experience as being, well,
indescribable.
I was concerned that many people might find it impossible to express what happened.

Are NDEs generally ineffable? I asked myself as I assembled the questionnaire for the NDERF site.

Given all these concerns, was I wasting my time?

The website for the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF, www.nderf.org) was launched on the World Wide Web on August 30, 1998. I had many questions about whether the NDERF site would be successful. Was the questionnaire too long? Did NDErs really want to share their experience with the world?
⁵
Would people trust a site like this?

I had not spent money on publicity for the site. Several months later, by monitoring the Web traffic, I could tell that the site had been visited by relatively few. Our search engine ranking was a pitiful 64.

Had I wasted hundreds of hours to accomplish nothing? Would enough experiences ever be shared with NDERF to answer my questions about the reality of NDEs?

Humbled, I continued to work diligently on the site. By now I had told several friends about the site and shared my concerns that few people were actually visiting it, let alone filling out the questionnaire. When I said this, some of my friends would simply smile and utter one of the most popular movie lines in history: “If you build it, they will come.” This is the classic line from the film
Field of Dreams,
in which an Iowa farmer builds a baseball field on his farm in hopes that several long-dead baseball players will come there to play.

As you can imagine, “build it and they will come” is not the creed of evidence-based medicine. We like to start with a little more science than that. As a result, I still cringe a little whenever I hear this Hollywood aphorism. However, I continued to build the site in hopes that, yes, they would come.

And finally, come they did. By December 1998 I downloaded the first twenty-two case studies from the website with great anticipation. I was jubilant. With all the effort I had put into the site, I was now going to have information about NDEs from the source—people who had the experiences! As a scientist and a “prove it to me” kind of man, I personally needed precisely this kind of information to begin to scientifically study NDEs.

Those first twenty-two case studies didn’t disappoint. As I read them it started to become obvious to me that the NDEs were real. I could see the same pattern of elements that Dr. Moody and other researchers had outlined in their work, including such elements as consciousness occurring apart from the body at the time of a life-threatening event.

Reading these early case studies was exciting beyond my wildest dreams. It became clear to me that by studying a large number of these NDEs in words that came directly from those who had experienced them, I could hope to eventually provide some answers to humankind’s most perplexing question: What happens when we die?

Below are paraphrases
⁶
of two of the first twenty-two NDE case studies I was honored to receive on the NDERF website:

In 1963 this young man lost control of his car and collided with a brick wall. His injuries were severe enough to fracture his face and sinus cavities and to break his jaw. Badly hurt, he sat on wet grass near the destroyed vehicle and then drifted into unconsciousness. As you read this, note the calmness with which he describes his experience as well as the presence of a very powerful out-of-body experience that seemed to indicate to him that all would be well in his life despite this near-fatal accident. Here’s his story:

I was in a severe automobile accident several years ago. The steering wheel smashed my face. The accident happened in a rainstorm, and I ran off the road and hit a tree.

For a while after the crash I felt nothing, and then the pain started to burn in my face. I got out of the car and lay down, hoping it would make me feel better, but it didn’t. Finally I just blacked out. When I awoke, I couldn’t see anything because my face was covered, but I could tell I was in a hospital from the sounds and the fact that I was on some kind of bed.

I don’t know how long it was, but I had the distinct sensation that I was floating out of my body. I saw my parents, who were there at the bedside, and could feel their emotional pain. It was strange. I should have been in pain but wasn’t’. Instead I was standing next to my parents trying to console them as they looked at their darling son, whom they had just been told was going to die. It was horrific, but there was nothing I could do about it. I stood next to my mother and tried to get her attention, but I couldn’t because she didn’t know I was there. I looked at my own body but wasn’t interested in what I was seeing. I actually felt like a fly on the wall.

Something in my mind finally clicked as I realized that they would eventually discover that I was not in pain, whether it was here on earth or not. At that point my empathetic pain went away and I focused on my experience. I remember thinking, “So this is what death is about,” as I rose further out of my body.

A light came into view and became larger and brighter as I drew closer. I knew this was it, the end of my life, and I wasn’t afraid. But as I drew near, a voice shouted at me to stop. And I mean shouted. “No, not yet!” the voice said.

When that happened I felt myself return very hard into my body. I gasped very loudly, but I knew I was going to survive after that. When they say it’s not your time, it’s not your time.

When I first read this man’s account of his near-fatal automobile accident, I was taken by the calmness with which he described the sense of peace and painlessness that came over him in the hospital. I was also intrigued by his description of the light that formed the boundary between life and death, as well as the strong voice that stopped him from crossing into the light.

This man came back from his experience with the ability to “intuit people’s feelings” (his words) as well as understand their emotional logic.
Intuiting people’s feelings
may be one type of psychic experience. I would encounter many more NDEs describing psychic experiences in the future.