Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (6 page)

Before you assume that NDEs always produce a stereophonic treat, consider this: the NDERF study found that the absence of sound during a near-death experience is more common than prior research has revealed. In our study, many NDErs experienced noticeable silence during their NDE. And that silence seems to be comforting for most who experience it. One eloquent NDEr said,

I left my body to the wonderful sound of silence, pure loving, graceful silence.

Another respondent, Joseph, described an experience that took place during an asthma attack that was so severe his medications had no effect and he began to thrash for breath. As Joseph told it:

I could feel myself thrashing, but it was this other feeling that I was most concerned about. There was this overwhelming feeling of energy coming over my entire body. I tried to fight it off with willpower, but it kept coming stronger and stronger and stronger, and finally I couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. I remember thinking to myself, “I just can’t do it anymore.”

Then as soon as I thought it, pop! This stillness came over me and my thoughts, [and] I wasn’t scared anymore. It was insanely quiet, and I realized that I was still there—and standing, no less (which was impossible due to the fact that I [had] just collapsed backward a few minutes earlier)—and then it dawned on me that I had just passed on. Wow!

This profound lack of sound seems to have had a deep effect. Joseph wrote:

There was no sound at all. It was the most peaceful silence I have ever experienced. Kind of like being submerged in water, with no one else around to make a sound. Thick, thick silence.

The experience was not uncomfortable for Joseph; rather, it was like being in a “state of meditation.” This intense silence, which Joseph links to a sense of peace, has carried over into his life. Now, says Joseph, he is much calmer and low- key than before his experience:

The things I got aggravated over in the past no longer have the same effect. If I go into my memory, I seem to have the ability to feel it all over again at will.

All five of the human senses of seeing, hearing, touch, taste, and smell have been described in NDEs. Heightened senses, enhanced vision and hearing, and accelerated consciousness are some of the most dramatic aspects of NDEs. Clearly, these enhanced senses are not in keeping with the clinical meaning of
unconscious
or
clinically dead.
It is medically inexplicable for anyone to have a heightened sense of consciousness while being at the brink of death. These experiences are not dreams or illusory fragments of memory from a dying brain. Near-death experiences are real. There are no other experiences of altered consciousness in which the experiences are so lucid, consciousness is so enhanced, and the experiences are so consistently ordered as in NDEs. The NDERF study, and virtually every study published in this field, shows this consistent pattern of heightened senses and consciousness, which leads some to call the experience a “lucid death.”
⁴

Still, there are those in the scientific community who don’t believe that a lucid death takes place. Some of them feel that in prior near-death-experience studies the definition of
near death
was too loose and that it included those who are not physically near death. Perhaps, the skeptics speculate, prior NDE studies included many case studies of those who were not truly near death. The lucid experiences would be explained by the fact that these people did not really have a close brush with death.

For the NDERF research we took these concerns into consideration. The NDERF study included only those people who reported an imminent, life-threatening event at the time of their NDE. The NDERF definition of such an event is very strict and includes only events in which people are physically compromised to the extent that death would be imminent without a change in their physical condition. Generally speaking, the individual reports being so physically compromised that they are unconscious and often clinically dead. Anyone who does not fit this definition is not included in our study.

One of the more common skeptical “explanations” of NDE has been hypoxia.
Hypoxia
means reduced oxygen levels in the blood and the tissues of the body, including the brain. Hypoxia may occur in a variety of conditions including cardiac arrest and other life-threatening events that result in loss of consciousness. Most doctors are quite familiar with the symptoms of hypoxia, which may include headaches, confusion, memory loss, and fatigue. As hypoxia worsens, it may result in increasing confusion and finally unconsciousness. If you have ever found yourself extremely short of breath for any reason, you may have experienced some of the symptoms of hypoxia. If so, unless your hypoxia was so severe that it was a life-threatening event, I am sure what you experienced had nothing in common with the elements of a near-death experience. Near-death experiences almost never have confused memories that are typical of the experience of hypoxia. The fact that highly lucid and organized near-death experiences occur at a time of severe hypoxia is further evidence of the extraordinary and inexplicable state of consciousness that typically occurs during NDEs.

Another appropriate concern from the skeptics is whether the content of people’s reported NDEs is influenced by how much they know about NDEs at the time of their experience. Some of the more clever researchers call this the “Oprah factor” because of the great job Oprah Winfrey’s television show has done to increase knowledge of NDEs.

The skeptics’ reasoning goes like this: If the NDEr is aware of NDEs at the time of their own experience, will that affect what they share about their own experience later?

Before the 1975 publication of Dr. Raymond Moody’s book
Life After Life
there would have been no possibility of this happening because the general public did not yet know the specific elements of the NDE.

Still, as a skeptic in my own right, I conducted a study to see if the Oprah factor had indeed affected what NDErs share. The study was a simple one. I compared responses to twenty-one survey questions in our first NDERF survey from people whose NDEs occurred before 1975 with people whose NDEs occurred after 1975.
⁵

To tell you the truth, the results surprised me. The same NDE elements occurred in the pre-1975 group as in the post-1975 group. What is more, the same elements took place with the same frequency. This study strongly suggests that the content of NDEs is not influenced by prior knowledge of NDEs.

Another and even more convincing study was conducted by Geena Athappilly, MD, and associates in 2006. She reviewed twenty-four NDEs that were shared and recorded prior to 1975, before NDE was publicly known, with a matched group of twenty-four accounts shared after 1975. Her study found that the NDEs from these two different time periods differed only in that NDEs recorded after 1975 showed more frequent description of a tunnel. The authors concluded: “These data challenge the hypothesis that near- death experience accounts are substantially influenced by prevailing cultural models.”
⁶

The Oprah factor was also addressed by the NDERF survey question “Did you have any knowledge of near-death experience (NDE) prior to your experience?” Of all NDErs surveyed, 66.4 percent responded “No,” which I felt was a surprisingly high percentage.

I have looked at thousands of case studies filled with solid evidence of a lucid death. The only conclusion I can come to is that consciousness leaves the body at death.

I know this means that standard logic does not apply—that death might not really mean a final death as we have come to know it. That is why this chapter is titled “Lucid Death.” I believe that having a vivid and conscious experience at the time of clinical death is among the best evidence available to suggest a conscious existence after bodily death. It presents one of the strongest lines of evidence of the afterlife.

An out-of-body experience (OBE) is the first element in many near-death experiences. In the way we have defined it here,
out of body
means “the separation of consciousness from the physical body.” Describing it in such a mild way seems almost too tame. Those who have OBEs may report that when they are in a state of unconsciousness and often have no pulse they are still able to see earthly, everyday events. People having OBEs may see their own unconscious body as well as the frantic activity of medical personnel who are trying to revive them.

Approximately half of all NDEs have an OBE that involves seeing or hearing earthly events. Usually the point of consciousness rises above the body. If a ceiling is present, consciousness usually does not rise above the ceiling, at least initially, and is commonly described as residing up in a corner of the room. It is uncommon for the point of consciousness to be at the same level as the body, and only rarely does the point of consciousness move to a location below the body.

Out-of-body experiences have been reported to occur spontaneously, when there is no associated life-threatening event. The term
out-of-body experience
as used in this book refers only to OBEs that occur during NDEs.

Here is an example of an OBE from a man who nearly died from a complication after surgery. As his medical team worked frantically to save his life, he watched from above:

Suddenly my consciousness rose above [my bed in] the ICU. I remember having told myself that I had not had an out-of-body experience so this could not be happening. As I rose, I told myself, “Well, here it is.”

The suggestion that OBEs exist may be very difficult for some to accept. This is understandable. Consciousness that exists separately from the physical body is an event that few people have experienced. Before accepting OBEs as factual, reasonable people may require extremely strong evidence for its reality. Such evidence is certainly available, as we shall see.

The first large study of out-of-body experiences occurring during near-death experiences was published in 1982 by cardiologist Michael Sabom, MD.
¹
He was intrigued by anecdotal reports that he had heard from other doctors. He devised a study in which he interviewed thirty-two NDErs who had out-of-body experiences during their NDEs. Most of these NDErs underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the time of their brush with death.

As part of this study, Sabom interviewed twenty-five “seasoned cardiac patients” who did not have NDEs during their cardiac crises. These twenty-five patients served as a control group in the study. Both groups were then asked to describe their own resuscitations.

Sabom found that the NDErs with out-of-body experiences were far more precise than those in the control group in accurately describing their resuscitations. In short, the results of this study were consistent with NDErs’ claims that they actually did witness their own resuscitation in the out- of-body state.

A study similar to Sabom’s was published in 2004 by Penny Sartori, PhD.
²
She interviewed fifteen NDErs and found that eight of them had experienced being out of body. Like Sabom, she asked the OBErs to describe their own resuscitation efforts and compared their responses to a control group in which the patients had undergone resuscitation but did not have an out-of-body experience.

Sartori found that several NDErs in this study provided remarkably accurate accounts in their out-of-body observations. The control group was highly inaccurate. Several NDErs were inaccurate in their observations, though this might be attributable to effects on their memory by medications administered to sedate them following resuscitation. Many in the control group could only guess at what had taken place or describe what they knew of resuscitation from television. This study is further evidence that those who have out-of-body experiences may indeed be witnessing their own resuscitation at a time when they are clinically dead.

Janice Holden, PhD, a professor of counseling at the University of North Texas, conducted another important study of OBEs.
³
Holden compiled all of the out-of-body accounts in all of the scholarly books and articles published about NDEs. Only accounts where the NDErs later sought to verify the accuracy of their OBE observations were included in the Holden study. This ambitious effort yielded eighty-nine case reports involving observations of earthly, everyday events by people who reported being out of body. An additional fourteen case reports involved observations during the NDE of “nonmaterial, nonphysical phenomena” that could be verified by later earthly observations. Four case reports in this study included both types of NDE observations.

Holden was a stickler for accuracy in this study. She considered the OBErs’ “earthly observation” to be inaccurate if even one detail of the observations was found to be inaccurate during later investigations. So if NDE observations were fully 99 percent accurate, the 1 percent that was inaccurate would lead the NDE observations overall to be labeled as inaccurate in this study. Even with such strict criteria, the study found that 92 percent of the NDErs had observations of earthly, everyday events that seemed completely accurate, with no error whatsoever as verified by investigations after the NDE.

One of my favorite out-of-body stories comes from an NDE reported by Kimberly Clark Sharp, a noted NDE researcher in Seattle, Washington.
⁴
In 1984 Sharp reported a case study in which a woman named Maria was rushed to the hospital with a severe heart attack. After successful resuscitation, Maria told Sharp about her near-death experience, including detailed out-of-body observations of her resuscitation. Then she went one step beyond. Her consciousness passed outside the hospital, she said, where she observed a tennis shoe on the third-story window ledge of the hospital. Maria provided detailed information about the shoe. It was a man’s shoe, she said, left-footed and dark blue with a wear mark over the little toe and a shoelace tucked under the heel.

Being the dedicated researcher that she is, Sharp went window to window on the hospital’s third floor looking on the ledges. Finally she found the shoe, exactly as Maria had described it. This account stands as remarkably evidential in spite of the efforts of some skeptics to cast doubts.
⁵

Another widely quoted experience of OBE perception was reported by Pim van Lommel, MD, and published in
The Lancet,
one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
⁶
The patient suffered a cardiac arrest and was not breathing. At the time that a tube was being placed in the airway to ventilate him, it was noted he had upper dentures. The dentures were removed and placed in a crash-cart drawer while the patient was deeply comatose. Over a week later the patient reported having an OBE and accurately described the room he was resuscitated in and the people present. Remarkably, he declared that his lost dentures could be found in the crash-cart drawer. Note that the patient reported seeing the nurse and those present during his resuscitation, which doesn’t occur unless someone is lucid and in an out-of-body state.