Authors: J. Steve Miller
Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (9 page)
It
Was Real
One
of the men I interviewed was emphatic. He looked me in the eyes and said:
“It was real – as real as me sitting
across from you and talking to you now. Nothing could ever convince me
otherwise.”
It
was such a strong, emotionally charged statement that I brought it up two more
times. He knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it wasn’t a dream or
hallucination. This intelligent, rational man was totally convinced that he’d
visited the other side.
As
you can imagine, people who’ve had NDEs have analyzed their experiences relentlessly.
But they consistently rule out vivid dreams or hallucinations.
“I couldn’t understand it. But it was
real…. My mind wasn’t at that point where I wanted to make things happen or
make up anything. My mind wasn’t manufacturing ideas. I just wasn’t in that
state of mind.”
(72)
“It was nothing like a hallucination. I
have had hallucinations before, when I was given codeine in the hospital. But
that had happened long before the accident that really killed me. And this
experience was nothing like the hallucinations, nothing like them at all.”
(73)
Some
report it as
more
real than what we experience in daily life.
·
“More
real than what we call reality….”
(74)
·
“It
was so vivid and real – more so than ordinary experience.”
(75)
Moody
notes that the experience is “incredibly vivid and real”
(76)
and summarizes
– “It must be emphasized that a person who has been through an experience of
this type has no doubt whatsoever as to its reality and its importance.”
(77)
As
researchers note, their subjects go beyond
verbally
insisting on its
reality; they make long-term life changes consistent with such an experience.
As
creatures of habit, we resist change. Yet their attitudes and actions changed
for the long haul. Van Lommel followed up with his NDE patients after two years
and eight years and found them profoundly different from the control group that
had experienced a cardiac arrest, but had no NDE.
(78)
Their
conviction that they truly visited the other side is also reflected in their
reluctance to tell people about their experiences. It would be so easy to tell
the doctor, “Wow, did I have a vivid dream while I was asleep!” But they can’t
say that. They feel very strongly that it was real. Naturally, they’re
reluctant to say, “While I was dead, I was very much alive in another realm.”
They’re smart enough to know that their nurses and friends would likely pat
them on the head and deflect the uncomfortable topic – “Well, you’ve been
through a lot in the last few days.”
The
Evidential Value of “Incredibly Vivid and Real”
At
first glance, I assumed that this “feeling of real” had no evidential value,
except perhaps for the person who had the experience. “So they had a dream that
seemed much more real than a normal dream,” I reflected. “That proves nothing.
If I had an extremely vivid dream, I’d be objective and skeptical enough to
describe it for what it was – an extremely vivid dream. ”
But
the more I thought about it, the more I felt I was missing something.
First
of all, my reaction shows that I assume I’m smarter and more objective than the
people who had the NDEs. Yet many studies show that we, particularly men, tend
to think we’re smarter than average.
(79)
The fact is, most of us are,
well, average. NDE researchers describe their subjects as intelligent and
psychologically sound. I think I can therefore assume that most of them are
evaluating their astounding experience in the same ways I’d be evaluating it.
This
naturally leads me to believe that if I were to switch places with the people I
interviewed, I’d be the one swearing that I’d seen the other side. No matter
what I think now, if I were to have this experience, after it I’d likely be
saying,
“It was real - as real as me sitting
across from you and talking to you now. Nothing could ever convince me
otherwise.”
How
Do I Distinguish Reality from Dreams?
“But
being
convinced
it’s real doesn’t mean it’s real,” someone may object.
“Perhaps this person merely had a vivid dream.”
But
reflect a bit more deeply. How do you know that what you’re experiencing
now
is real?
You
might say, “When I’m awake, I can feel and see things in such a vivid way that
when I wake up from a dream I can say, ‘That was a dream and this is
reality.’’’ Ok, but did you hear what you just said? It’s the
vividness
of your conscious experience that proves to you that you’re
really
reading this book instead of
dreaming
that you’re reading this book.
But
that’s precisely what these people are saying about their out-of-body
experience – it was qualitatively different from a dream. It was as real as
their normal experience with reality. In fact, they often report that the NDE
was “more” real than their normal experience with reality.
(80)
Someone
might respond, “Granted, if I ever have this experience, I’ll probably believe
as well. But until I experience it, I don’t have enough evidence to make a
decision.” Please indulge me a short story to respond.
(81)
A Skeptical
Fellowship Examines NDEs
Let’s
imagine that I’m a thoroughgoing materialist (believing that immaterial things
like God, souls, and minds don’t exist) and enjoy nothing more than meeting
once a month at a local grill with nine of my materialist friends. We’re all equally
skeptical of all things religious.
Early
one morning Mike calls me from the hospital, having suffered a cardiac arrest. I
meet him there and discover that, to his utter amazement, he experienced an
NDE. Then he looks me intensely and says, with great assurance and emotion -
“And it was
real.
I’ve thought
long and hard about all the possible naturalistic explanations, and none of
them explain away my experience. Steve, it was real – just as real as me
sitting here talking to you – even MORE real. And I saw specific things happened
in that operating room while I was unconscious that the doctors confirmed
afterwards. I’m afraid I’m no longer a materialist.”
So
what would I make of that?
Being
a skeptic, I’d sift through the evidence and try to follow Mike’s line of
argument. But of course I didn’t have the “realer than real” experience. It’s
quite possible that in my next meeting, I’d talk it over with my buddies and
conclude, “Well, obviously ole Pete wasn’t as strong a materialist as we
thought he was. If I’d been the one with the NDE, I’d have woken up saying,
“Wow, what an experience! And it seemed so real! But I’m scientific enough to
know that just because it
seemed
real doesn’t mean it
was
real.”
But
over the ensuing years, imagine that two more of my buddies have NDEs, one
during a traffic accident and another during surgery. So I tell my remaining
materialists, “It’s hard to believe that Mike, Pete, and Jed now believe in the
afterlife! Do you suppose that if each of us had NDEs, we’d believe as well?”
“But
why should we wait for our own experience?” reflects Austin. “They all thought
just like we did. They were materialists. We’re not likely smarter or more
informed than they are. Just like us, they didn’t buy into all this
mind/soul/heaven stuff. Just like us, they weren’t psychologically primed for
an NDE; they were expecting utter nothingness after death. I think we can safely
assume that if we shared their experiences, we’d all believe in the afterlife
as well. So why should we hold out for our own NDE? We can predict, with the
evidence already set before us, that if we had NDEs, we’d most likely believe
just like our friends. So shouldn’t we believe on the basis of their
testimonies that they’ve indeed seen the other side?”
“But
that approach violates everything we stand for,” I might object. “We don’t
believe things because other people believe them. We believe them because we
have adequate evidence.”
“But
we’re not mindlessly believing simply because they believe it,” replies Austin.
“We’re accepting their testimony, which we deem reliable, about an experience
that we may never have. Since I’ll likely never go to the moon, I trust the
experiences of those who’ve been there. Apparently, many bright, trustworthy,
skeptical people have been granted, prior to their final deaths, a taste of
eternity. Since we may never experience an NDE, shouldn’t we believe on the basis
of evidence provided by multiple testimonies that we deem trustworthy?”
Back
to Shangri-La
And
so we return full circle to the beginning of this book, where we were
investigating the existence of Shangri-La. We decided that we needed reliable
testimony from people who’d been there, hopefully with some corroborating
evidence in hand. That’s precisely what we’ve found regarding the afterlife – a
growing multitude of witnesses with 12 lines of corroborating evidence proclaiming
consistently that life endures after death.
In
the mid 1900s physicians obsessed on keeping dying people alive, leaving family,
friends, and ministers to deal with the apparently unscientific questions regarding
life after death.
When NDEs occurred, patients seldom told their doctors
for fear of ridicule or referral to a psychiatrist.
When
Raymond Moody published his interviews and analyses in 1975, the public became
fascinated and medical professionals responded with guarded disbelief.
(82)
How
could such a significant experience be happening to their patients without
their knowledge? And if it was indeed happening, surely it could be easily
explained by psychological or physiological processes.
So
far, such explanations have failed.
Each
naturalistic explanation – anoxia, hypercarbia, expectations, wishful thinking,
etc. - fell woefully short when compared with the data collected during
subsequent scientific investigations.
But
lack of a naturalistic explanation doesn’t necessitate resorting to spiritual
explanations. Instead, we can examine the data as it stands after 35 years of scientific
investigation and judge which hypothesis provides the best fit for the data.
Such
an examination reveals a perplexing phenomenon, the characteristics of which we’d
have never predicted from naturalistic worldview. These are not characteristics
that one can skim halfheartedly; rather, they demand deep reflection over time,
much as the researchers contemplated their data over years of study.
- If NDEs are caused by expectations of heaven or
wishful thinking
,
then why are both the religious and irreligious surprised by how the
experience fails to conform to their expectations? Especially in the early
studies, before NDEs were popularized, nobody was expecting an experience
of leaving the body, observing resuscitation efforts, meeting deceased
relatives, reviewing their lives, and discussing whether or not to return.
Why don’t people’s NDEs differ significantly according to their differing
worldviews and expectations? And why do they occur in people who weren’t
expecting to die? - If the experience happens totally within the brain
, then how can we
explain corroborating evidence showing that the mind was active apart from
the body – the scores of detailed descriptions of surgeries, meetings with
deceased relatives that they were unaware had died, etc.? How could the
brain produce a vivid (reported as more clear than normal reality)
conscious experience when the brain is often, from our present scientific
understanding, incapable of rational thought and memories? And how can the
inner workings of the dying person’s brain explain the shared NDE of
others in the room, or even those unaware of the person’s physical state,
at a distance? - If NDErs are making things up or embellishing
, then what are their
motives? All studies show NDErs overwhelmingly reluctant to share their
experiences for fear of ridicule. What do they have to gain by telling
such a tall tale to their doctors? And why are their “made-up” stories so
similar, since most subjects were unaware of NDEs and there’s no evidence of
mass collaboration or conspiracies? Why do longitudinal studies find that
years after the event, their stories remain the same in all details? And
if patients are fabricating NDEs, why do such stories produce long-term
life changes? - If the researchers are fudging their data to seek
fame
,
then how do they get away with publishing hundreds of articles in respected
peer-reviewed journals, knowing that their methods and results are subject
to intense scrutiny by skeptical peers? Each published study risks rival
researchers replicating the study and showing the earlier study to be a
sham. These highly successful doctors and professors put their teaching
positions and reputations at risk if they publish nonsense. And how do the
studies get through the peer reviewed publication process in the first
place if their methods are questionable?