Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (9 page)

In prior chapters I presented the responses to survey questions from the NDERF study of 613 NDErs, all with NDE Scale scores of 7 and higher. To compare the content of NDEs occurring under general anesthesia to all other NDEs, I used this same group of 613 NDErs.

This study included twenty-three NDErs who described their experiences as having occurred while under general anesthesia. Many of these accounts described a cardiac arrest as the associated life-threatening event while under general anesthesia.

These NDEs occurring under general anesthesia were compared to the remaining 590 NDEs in the NDERF study by reviewing the responses of both groups to thirty-three survey questions that asked about NDE content. We compared the responses to these thirty-three questions between the two groups using a statistical tool called chi-square. Due to the large number of questions asked about the content of the NDE, the responses between the two groups were considered different only if there was a statistically determined less than 1 in 100 chance that the differences in responses could be due to chance. A
trend
toward a statistically significant difference was defined as a 3 in 100 chance that the differences in responses between the two groups could be due to chance.

The results: there were no significant differences in the responses to any of the thirty-three survey questions between the two groups, with the exception that anesthesia-associated NDEs reported encountering a tunnel more often. Near- death experiences described as occurring under general anesthesia had all the NDE elements as those not occurring under general anesthesia. Remarkably, NDE elements appear to occur with the same frequency, with the exception of a tunnel experience, regardless of whether or not the NDEr was under general anesthesia at the time of their experience.

If consciousness were only a product of the physical brain, then it would make sense that NDEs under general anesthesia would have less consciousness and alertness during their experiences than other NDEs, right? This is certainly what would be expected, but it is not what the NDERF study found. An NDERF survey question asks, “How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness?” For the NDEs described as occurring under general anesthesia, 83 percent of the respondents answered “More consciousness and alertness than normal” to this question, compared to 74 percent for all other NDEs. The responses to this question by the two groups were not statistically significantly different.

These are incredible results! Either general anesthesia alone
or
cardiac arrest alone produces unconsciousness with no possibility of a lucid memory. Recall our prior discussion that ten to twenty seconds after a cardiac arrest the EEG, a measure of brain electrical activity, goes flat, indicating no measurable electrical brain activity. The occurrence of typical NDEs under general anesthesia is thus doubly medically inexplicable. The finding that typical NDEs occur while under general anesthesia is among the strongest evidence yet presented that consciousness can exist apart from the body.

Other NDE researchers have reported NDEs that take place while under general anesthesia. Bruce Greyson, MD, at the University of Virginia, states, “In our collection of NDEs, 127 out of 578 NDE cases (22 percent) occurred under general anesthesia, and they included such features as OBEs that involved experiencers’ watching medical personnel working on their bodies, an unusually bright or vivid light, meeting deceased persons, and thoughts, memories, and sensations that were clearer than usual.”
¹

Sir John Eccles was a Nobel Prize—winning neuroscientist who studied consciousness. He proposed that consciousness may actually exist apart from the brain. Eccles once stated, “I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition…. We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.”
²

There are skeptics, of course. And the ones speaking out on this subject say that experiences like these can only be the result of too little anesthesia being used, leading to partial consciousness during the operation.

To say this, of course, is to ignore NDEs resulting from anesthetic overdose. And it also ignores the type of experiences reported by patients who do actually awaken from anesthesia during surgery. Fortunately, only 1 to 3 in 1,000 patients
³
experience this “anesthetic awareness.”

Rather than the type of coherent NDEs you read here, anesthetic awareness results in totally different experiences.
⁴
Those who experience anesthetic awareness often report very unpleasant, painful, and frightening experiences. Unlike NDEs, which are predominantly visual experiences, this partial awakening during anesthesia more often involves brief and fragmented experiences that may involve hearing, but usually not vision. I would emphasize that partial awakening during anesthesia is very rare and should not be a serious cause of worry about an anesthetic procedure.

When near-death experiences occur during general anesthesia, there are often OBE observations of the operation. During these out-of-body experience observations, NDErs typically see their own resuscitation taking place on the operating table. These near-death experiencers are not seeing themselves with too little anesthesia; they are seeing themselves coding. What the near-death experiencers see confirms that their NDEs are occurring at the time of a life-threatening event, usually a cardiac arrest.

Near-death experiences that occur during cardiac arrest while under general anesthesia are perhaps the strictest test of the possibility of consciousness residing outside of the body. By conventional medical thinking, neither a person under anesthesia nor a person experiencing cardiac arrest should have a conscious experience like that of an NDE. Yet the NDERF study found many that do.

Over twenty different “explanations” of near-death experience have been suggested by skeptics over the years. If there were one or even several “explanations” of NDE that were widely accepted as plausible by the skeptics, there would not be so many different “explanations.” The existence of so many “explanations” suggests that there are not any “explanations” of NDE that the skeptics agree on as plausible.

A study by Kevin Nelson, MD, and colleagues suggested a connection between REM intrusion and NDEs.
⁵
REM is an abbreviation for rapid eye movement. REM commonly occurs as a normal part of sleep, often in association with muscle paralysis. REM sleep commonly includes bizarre and frightening dream imagery. If REM occurs during a time of partial or complete wakefulness, the imagery of these dreams intruding into wakefulness is called REM intrusion. I coauthored a response to Dr. Nelson’s paper in which we pointed out that REM intrusion and NDEs are very different experiences. In addition, REM intrusion cannot explain near- death-experience content under circumstances where REM intrusion should not be possible, including NDEs in those blind from birth and NDEs during general anesthesia.
⁶

Neuroscientists like Eccles have suggested that consciousness may separate from our material body. It caused him to ponder not only the meaning of life, but also exactly what we mean by the concept of death. We know what happens to the corporeal body when it expires, but what about the soul? It was a question he was never able to answer to his full satisfaction, but he nonetheless commented on it: “We can regard the death of the body and brain as dissolution of our dualist existence,” said the Nobel Prize winner. “Hopefully, the liberated soul will find another future of even deeper meaning and more entrancing experiences, perhaps in some renewed embodied existence.”
⁷

There is no explanation for NDEs occurring under anesthesia other than accepting that full consciousness can exist apart from the physical body. For that reason, I consider them significant evidence of the afterlife.

We will next explore an especially interesting element of near-death experience: the
life review.
What exactly is a life review? There is no better way to answer that question than to actually read one from the NDERF study.

This is a life review from a young man named Mark. He was a passenger in a Jeep that lost control on a snowy road near Lake Tahoe and slammed into a telephone pole. Mark was seriously injured as he was crushed between the Jeep and telephone pole. As a result of this traumatic accident, he had a full-blown near-death experience, one that contained most of the elements outlined in the beginning of this book. One of those elements was a profound life review.

Before you read this, note that there are certain elements common to profound life reviews. For example, Mark sees real events from his life as though they are scenes from a movie about himself. Many near-death experiencers describe their life reviews using terms like
movie,
and they are not bizarre dream images. He also has an empathic reaction to what he is re-experiencing. In essence, he is able to feel how he has made others feel during certain events in his life. He also comes to several conclusions about his life and about life itself.

The self-knowledge that Mark gained through his NDE helped give him direction so that he made important changes in the rest of his life. Mark now thinks about death differently. As he wrote on his NDERF survey form: “All life ends in death…. It is not to be feared…. Was it Peter Pan who said, ‘To die is the greatest adventure’? You will all take this trip. At the moment of death let go of the fear and enjoy the ride.”

Here is Mark’s life review:

It is unclear how we started, only that the result of this first message was for me to begin a series of feelings about my life. It was the proverbial “life flashing before my eyes” or life review, as I have since heard it called. I would describe this as a long series of feelings based on numerous actions in my life. The difference was that not only did I experience the feelings again, but I had some sort of empathetic sense of the feelings of those around me who were affected by my actions. In other words, I also felt what others felt about my life. The most overwhelming of these feelings came from my mother.

I was adopted as an infant. I had been somewhat of a troublemaker. - I sometimes hurt other children when smaller and had taken to drug and alcohol abuse, stealing, crazy driving, bad grades, vandalism, cruelty to my sister, cruelty to animals—the list goes on and on. All of these actions were relived in a nutshell, with the associated feelings of both myself and the parties involved. But the most profound was a strange sense coming from my mother. I could feel how she felt to hear of my death. She was heartbroken and in great pain, but it was all mixed up with feelings of how much trouble I had been in. I got a sense that it was such a tragedy to have had this life end so soon, having never really done much good.

This feeling left me with a sense of having unfinished business in life. The grief that I felt from my mother and friends was intense. In spite of my troubled life, I had many friends, some of whom were close. I was well known if not popular, and I could sense many things said about my life and death. The sense of my mother’s grief was overwhelming.

Life reviews like Mark’s are among the most transformative and powerful aspects of the near-death experience. Because of its very nature—sometimes a three-dimensional, panoramic review of
everything
significant in the NDEr’s life—the life review is considered a condensed form of healing psychotherapy. “One-minute psychotherapy,” as Dr. Raymond Moody has called it.
¹

At the very least, life reviews contain fragments of the NDEr’s earthly life. Generally speaking, NDErs who have life reviews view themselves from a third-person perspective. They watch themselves interacting with the people in their lives. They see how they treated others and often step into the other person’s place so they know how that person felt when interacting with them. As you can imagine, this can be pleasant or unpleasant depending upon the level of kindness involved. A kind act would result in the NDEr feeling the kindness doled out to the other person, while an unkind act would result in feeling the unkindness.

A spiritual being sometimes accompanies the person who is having the life review. This being may serve as a kind of loving guide, assessing the life review from a higher spiritual plane as the NDEr watches, discussing the spiritual ramifications of the events of the NDEr’s life. The being’s comments may help the NDEr put his or her life into perspective. Near-death experiencers almost never describe feeling negatively judged by this spiritual being, no matter how unkind they were up to that point in their lives. Near-death experiencers who reviewed many of their own prior cruel actions often express great relief that they were not negatively judged during their NDEs.

When playwright George Kaufman said, “You can’t take it with you,” he was obviously referring to material things. Many near-death-experience researchers have noted that one of the life review’s main lessons is that knowledge and love are two elements that we take with us when we die. As a result, life reviews are often one of the most transformative elements of the NDE. Those who have powerful life reviews tend to revere both knowledge and love after their NDE.

Many NDErs say that the life review, of all the elements of the NDE, was by far the greatest catalyst for change. A life review allows NDErs to relive their own lives, mistakes and all. It also gives them a chance to evaluate themselves on their life performance. Many things that seemed insignificant at the time—a small kindness, for instance—turn out to be significant in their own or another person’s life. People realize they became angry over things that were not important or that they placed too much significance on unimportant things.

Here are two more examples of life reviews from NDERF:

Roger was returning from Quebec City with a friend when they lost control of the car they were driving and slammed head-on into another vehicle. Roger immediately left his body and saw from above the events that were swirling around the accident scene. Then, said Roger,

I went into a dark place with nothing around me, but I wasn’t: scared. It was really peaceful there. I then began to see my whole life unfolding before me like a film projected on a screen, from babyhood to adult life. It was so real! I was looking at myself, but better than a 3-D movie as I was also capable of sensing the feelings of the persons I had interacted with through the years. I could feel the good and bad emotions I made them go through. I was also capable of seeing that the better I made them feel, and the better the emotions they had because of me, [the more] credit (karma) [I would accumulate] and that the bad [emotions] would take some of it back … just like in a bank account, but here it was like a karma account to my knowledge.

Linda made a medication mistake. Thinking she was supposed to take eight tablets at once rather than eight over the course of a day, as prescribed by her doctor, Linda passed out on her bed and then passed over.

What I find interesting about this NDE resulting from an accidental overdose is the strong elements of empathy it contains. As you can see, Linda’s life review is filled with a message of karma:

I saw everything from birth till then in fast motion. Also, while this was happening I could feel the feelings of these events. I could also feel any pain I gave out to others. I also felt the goodness I’d given out. God asked if I was happy with how things went, and I said yes. He asked me how I felt, and I said I was a little nervous. He explained that this was because all my life I felt this way and it is sort of why I didn’t handle [life] properly. I was also told that if the bad outweighed the good you [are] left with the bad. So if you were a truly awful person, you’d be feeling quite awful for your time there. Alternately, if you have given out love and goodness and been kind and caring, you’d be up there feeling sheer bliss and good. I was feeling no extreme sense of badness, for lack of a better word. I was feeling happy, light, carefree but a little nervous inside, like I’d been over a hill too fast or ridden a roller-coaster. But all in all, the balance seemed fair and just enough for what I had just been shown. Mostly good stuff had outweighed the bad.