Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (12 page)

If
NDEs merely preach back to us our own values, why do so many NDErs indicate
that this experience with love represented a
change
in life direction
for them? Apparently, compassionate attention to family and acquaintances
wasn’t a former priority.

Why
then the consistent, overwhelming pattern of love as being what really matters,
whether the NDEr is a child or adult, a defensive tackle or a mother of small
children, a pastor or a Marxist, a connoisseur of recreational drugs or an
academic high achiever?

To
me, this consistent pattern of “compassionate service is what it’s all about”
is more consistent with NDEs being very real encounters with spiritual reality
than a naturalistic creation of dying brains.  As a formerly agnostic physician
from India put it, “…I was skeptical of religion or anything that could not be
called strictly scientific.” Yet, he reflected that his NDE couldn’t “be
explained in normal objective terms. I underwent a positive personality change.
All my arrogance vanished.”
(9)  

The
Pattern of Love

Here’s
how some NDErs around the world put the outcome of their experience in their
own words (note – I quote them exactly, although for most of them English is a
second language). 

Chen from China

Background:
“I
believed in Marxism. I joined the Chinese Communist Party when I was in
university and I had a great ambition when I was employed. I deeply believe[d]
in materialism and I strongly rejected anything that relate to idealism.
Neither did I believe in God. However I experienced an NDE and it has
changed me completely.”
(10)  

Impact:
“After
the NDE… I started to concern about the suffering in the world. I comfort
others who is in despair … I filled my life with love and I loved to help
others. I don't care about money or fame anymore.”

Victor
from Russia

Background:
No
religious background. Formerly plagued with depression, particularly about
difficulties completing college. “I simply didn’t see the point of my own
existence.” 

NDE
:
“
The light was
extraordinary. In it were love and peace. I was completely enveloped by
love and I felt totally secure.” 

Impact:  “
Some invisible force had opened up new paths
along which I must travel, something to strive for, that my life was not in
vain, and that I should have goals that fill the needs of those around me as
well as my own, and that every day should be filled with good and meaningful
activities.”
(11)  

Hazeliene
from Singapore

The NDE:
“Someone
spoken to me for a while, I heard and that voice came from that light. You
know what I felt when I saw that light? When I saw that bright light, I
felt that someone loves me very much (but no idea who it was) I was very
overwhelmed with that bright light. And while I was there, I felt the love and
that love I never felt before. That light welcoming me very warmly and loves me
very much.  My words to the light before I woke up was this: I wanted to
stay here, but I love my two kids.”

“Reason
why I felt very overwhelmed? I felt that only that light ever love me and no
one does. All people knows only to beat me, hurt me, criticized me, offended me,
and many more. Nobody love me like that kind of love before.”

Impact:
“As a
single mother/parent I have to love my children unconditionally. My mission is
to raise them up in a proper manner and help poor people.”
(12)  

Suresh
from India

Impact:
“
I realized that god was love, light and motion and to be able to
receive him in the heart one had to cleanse it and mind by apologizing to all
people I was associated with and with whom I had differences, arguments or
quarrels or all those whom I might have knowingly or unknowingly caused pain. The
kind of love that I experienced there cannot be expressed in words.”

Gülden from Turkey

Impact:
“I meet
people with more joy. I hardly get angry. My daily life is full of love and
peaceful. I feel pleasure by helping to strangers.”
(13)  

Muhammad from Egypt

Impact
: “I felt
that love is the one thing that all humans must feel towards each other, only
then we would be happy.”
(14)  

Conclusion

There
is
a pattern – a distinct pattern that permeates NDEs
around the world. While it may come in a culturally meaningful package, no
matter what their former religious beliefs, priorities in life, level of
education, personalities, or family backgrounds, they report leaving their
bodies and travelling to another dimension where time and space somehow vanish.
Once separated from the body, their minds experience consciousness on steroids
– communicating directly and effortlessly – their sight unencumbered by the
limitations of eyes, their hearing unencumbered by the limitations of ears.
They talk to deceased relatives, experience strong emotions, and commune with a
loving being of light. They review their lives and decide that compassion to
their fellow life travelers is what really matters.

And they swear it wasn’t a dream. It was real.

Thus the pattern holds. The source of this pattern may point to the
very meaning of life and the purpose of our existence.

Appendix #2
Two Recent Articles Proclaim That
Science Has Explained NDEs’ Paranormal Features

These articles claim that
since elements of NDEs can be produced in ways other than coming near death,
that there’s no need to suggest that God and heaven have anything to do with
them. Although I deal with naturalistic arguments in Chapter 4, I felt that a
more specific response to these articles was warranted since they received widespread
popular coverage by outlets including NPR, BBC, Discovery, and Discovery News,
as well as significant international coverage.
(3)  

I’ll
concentrate on the
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
article, since it’s the
source of the other article and includes the scholarly documentation.

Evaluation 

1. It
unfairly implies that NDE researchers ignore discussions of naturalistic
arguments.
“This [Moody’s
Life after Life
] and
other bestseller books have largely omitted discussion of any physiological
basis for these experiences, and instead appear to prefer paranormal
explanations over and above scientific enlightenment.” That may be true of
certain popular books, but all the respected NDE researchers I’ve read are well
aware of these arguments and have dealt with them extensively.

Moody
actually devoted a significant section of
Life after Life
to examining
and ruling out many of the same explanations that keep getting published as if
they’re new, including pharmacological, physiological, neurological, and
psychological explanations – some of the very same explanations forwarded in
this article.
(4)
These explanations have been extensively tested and
discussed, with summary articles and literature reviews pulling together the
results of decades of research. Chris Carter devotes 66 pages to examining
research on naturalistic arguments,
(5)
van Lommel 30 pages,
(6)
Penny
Sartori 63 pages.
(7)
Greyson, Kelly, and Kelly wrote a 21 page
literature review of these explanations.
(8)
It’s significant that all of
these reviews of the research concluded that naturalistic explanations were
inadequate.  

2. It
fails to take into account relevant data from peer-reviewed NDE studies.
If
an article in a scholarly journal isn’t presenting its own fresh research, we
assume that it’s tying together the relevant research from past studies. Thus,
if Mobbs and Watt want to stand for “scientific enlightenment,” why did they ignore
the large body of scientific research that contradicts their thesis? Why did
they fail to mention even one of the many review chapters and articles that sum
up the current state of research?   

In
an interview, co-author Watt gave this explanation:

There’s
a category of articles in that journal called Forum: Science & Society.
These articles are deliberately designed to be provoking of debate. The whole
idea of this group of articles…is not to claim that you’re making some
comprehensive review. It’s not to produce any new evidence for testing a
theory, for example. It’s a bit like an opinion piece, like an editorial in a
newspaper, where you make an argument that is intended to stimulate discussion
or provoke debate.
(9)
 

Unfortunately,
the article itself never states this. Thus, readers worldwide read it as a
serious attempt to sum up the scientific research on the subject, not an
opinion piece to provoke controversy.
(10)  

2.
It states, “a handful of scientific studies of near-death experiences do
exist.”
Actually, over the past few decades, over 55 researchers
or teams have published over 65 studies of over 3500 NDEs.
(11)  

3.
It misquotes van Lommel’s study, attributing to him a case that indicated the
NDE was happening during REM sleep.
Van Lommel never described
such an event. In fact, van Lommel states that his research indicated that REM
sleep “could not account for their life reviews,” since their brains were not
functional enough to produce consciousness.
(12)  

As Dr. Bruce Greyson,
professor of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of
Virginia observed:  

 “If
you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs, then it’s easy to conclude,
there’s nothing paranormal about them.”
(18)
 

So why the misleading title?
Co-author Watt explains, “…the editor requested that we change the title to
something which is much more bold and deliberately making a statement that
would provoke a reaction. … However, I believe it’s an overstatement.”
(19)  

And the overstatement worked.
It apparently went worldwide, assuring people that science had finally
explained NDEs as a completely natural phenomenon. Yet, it never even dealt
with the most relevant data.