Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (17 page)

Appendix #8
NDEs with Corroboration

(This chart was originally compiled by Janice Miner Holden and republished
with permission from ABC-CLIO, LLC, originally Table 9.1, p. 194, in
The
Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
, edited by Janice Miner Holden, et al.,
2009, permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.)

Sources of Anecdotes Involving Apparently
Nonphysical Veridical Perception

Appendix #9
Guide to Further Research
 

Here
I list bibliographies, websites, journals, and books for further research,
especially for those who are doing academic research. Thus, I suggest primarily
studies of multiple NDEs, rather than inspirational books where an individual
writes his or her own experience.

This
is an exciting topic to research and would be ideal for those doing masters
theses or doctoral dissertations. Put in a year or so of intense research and
you can get your hands around the field. But I’d encourage you to not rush the
study. Many aspects of NDEs require not only reading, but reflection. Read a
couple of chapters of a meaty study, then take time to reflect upon the data.
Allow your mind to roam outside of your intellectual comfort zone. Ask among
your trusted friends and relatives about people within their trusted circles
who’ve experienced NDEs. Interview them. Then reflect upon their experiences
and ask them follow-up questions. You may come up with insights that have yet
to be explored. It’s truly a fascinating field of study! 

Video

The
Day I Died: The Mind, the Brain, and Near-Death Experiences
,
2002, co-produced by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and TLC. This video
can serve not only as a personal introduction to NDEs, but also as a tool to acquaint
nurses, counselors, doctors and students with NDEs. It’s very well done. In
this video you’ll find personal interviews with NDEers such as Pam Reynolds and
one who was born blind. You’ll meet researchers van Lommel, Greyson, Parnia,
Fenwick, Blackmore, and Sabom. I found it on YouTube, but the low quality of
the YouTube copy took away from the effect. You can order the original here:

http://ffh.films.com/id/11685

or
get a 40% discount if you join the International Association for Near-Death
Studies here:

http://iands.org/resources/educational-materials/30-the-ultimate-nde-video.html

Interviews

At
http://www.skeptiko.com
, Alex Tsakiris interviews
key writers on all sides of the mind/body, natural/supernatural debate. Tsakiris
asks excellent questions, doesn’t shy away from controversy, and offers both
audio and print versions – free of charge. Concerning NDEs, he’s interviewed such
writers as Nancy Evans Bush on distressing NDEs, Raymond Moody, Melvin Morse, Jan
Holden, Eben Alexander, Chris Carter, Pim van Lommel, Jeffrey Long, Sam Parnia,
Susan Blackmore, G.M. Woerlee, Penny Sartori, Peter Fenwick, etc.  

Books
(I’m
listing these in order of recommended reading for researchers, although this
will vary depending upon the purpose of your study.)

Life
After Life
, Raymond Moody, M.D., 1975
- This
book first popularized the NDE and remains a great place to start for an
eye-opening introduction. Here students can read portions of a large number of
NDEs to get a feel for the typical elements and what the “remarkable
convergence” is all about.

As a
young student, Moody didn’t believe in life after death. Then he heard a
presentation by a local psychiatrist who claimed to have died, come back to
life, and was convinced he’d experienced life on the other side. As a
philosopher (earned Ph.D.) and physician in training (he’d later complete his
degree in psychiatry), Moody applied his restless mind to interviewing over 150
people about their NDEs, coining the phrase “near-death experience.”

Since
Moody was among the first in recent history to study NDEs, his subjects’
experiences can hardly be explained away as being caused solely by expectations
of an NDE-like experience.    

Two weaknesses:
First, Moody notes that his subjects, while diverse in their beliefs prior to
their NDEs, were all from America. Researchers would later compare NDEs in
other cultures. Second, he admits that the study was largely anecdotal. He
interviewed people who claimed to have the experience, but didn’t indicate that
he tried to verify their claims of corroboration with medical records,
corroborating testimony, etc.

The
Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation,
edited
by Janice Miner Holden, EdD, Bruce Greyson, MD, and Debbie James, MSN, RN, 2009
-
If you want to do serious research and have a high tolerance for scholarly
detail, save yourself a lot of time by acquiring the standard reference book in
its field. You’ll meet the key researchers, find the most important studies, and
read summaries of the current state of research (as of 2005).

Some
of the most respected NDE researchers provide chapters summing up research on
pleasurable experiences, distressing experiences, children’s NDEs, non-western
NDEs, corroborating evidence (e.g., veridical perception), explanatory models,
and practical recommendations for doctors, nurses, psychologists, hospice
workers, and others who treat and counsel NDErs. The thorough documentation not
only gives it authority, but also helps researchers plot a course for future
study.  

(Note:
If the price is outside of your research budget, urge your library to purchase
a copy. I checked it out free through interlibrary loan and took copious notes.)

For
those exploring the evidential value of NDEs, note particularly Chapters 5
(“The Near-Death Experiences of Western Children and Teens”), 7 (“Census of
Non-Western Near-Death Experiences to 2005”), 9 (“Veridical Perception in
Near-Death Experiences”), and 10 (“Explanatory Models for Near-Death
Experiences”).   

Consciousness
Beyond Life
, Pim van Lommel, M.D., 2007
- Serious
students of NDEs will want to acquaint themselves with some of the prospective
NDE studies in the clinical setting. Van Lommel offers one of the most recent
studies and his book is not only well-written, but also brings earlier studies
to bear in drawing his conclusions.  

This
respected cardiologist began his practice as a naturalist, but became convinced
that his resuscitated patients were very much alive outside their bodies while
their brains shouldn’t have been capable of consciousness. While Moody interviewed
people about their past experiences (a
retrospective
study), van Lommel
interviewed, in a clinical setting, both his patients reporting NDEs and a
control group of similarly diagnosed patients who did not report NDEs, making
it a
prospective
study.

Additionally,
van Lommel re-interviewed both groups over the years to compare their long-term
life changes (a
longitudinal
study). These aspects made van Lommel’s
study much more scientifically rigorous than Moody’s. Van Lommel documented his
sources very well and showed an exceptional command of the relevant literature
in the field.

Readers
lacking sufficient patience and motivation may fail to work their way through
the entire book. While Moody writes for a more popular audience, van Lommel
attempts
to write for the average Joe, but obviously has fellow physicians in mind when
he throws around phrases like myocardial infarction.

Recollections
of Death: A Medical Investigation
, by Michael B. Sabom, M.D.
-
If you want to study NDE research in chronological order, read Dr. Sabom’s
study immediately after
Life After Life
. Sabom, a cardiologist, began
his interviews in 1976, a year after the release of Moody’s book.

It
all began when Sabom attended a seminar on
Life After Life
, presented by
a psychiatric social worker, Sarah Kreutziger. Being the only physician
present, he was asked for his opinion. He replied simply, “I don’t believe it.”
(1)
But Kreutziger challenged him to ask his cardiac patients about their
experiences and he was shocked that the third patient he asked reported a NDE.
(2)
 

Recognizing
that Moody’s interviews were rather casual and unsystematic, Sabom decided to
do a prospective study (he also did retrospective interviews, but evaluated
them separately) of his patients in the clinical setting. He assumed that,
contra Moody’s report, he’d find a variety of widely divergent experiences, and
that he could discredit their supposed visual recollections of their surgeries
(from outside their bodies), since he knew the intricate details.
(3)
In
sum, Sabom stated, “I suppose if someone had asked me what I thought of death,
I would have said that with death you are dead and that is the end of it.”
(4)
 

After
his first year of interviews, he started changing his mind.
(5)
By the
end of his study (five years total), after interviewing 32 patients who described
in detail their own resuscitations, he was convinced that they had actually
left their bodies.

A
great value to Sabom’s study is that he approaches it, not just as a physician,
but as a skeptical investigator. He consistently checks patient’s stories
against their medical records and interviews attending physicians and nurses to
corroborate stories.
(6)
He excluded any patients with psychiatric
illness or significant mental impairment.
(7)
He asked very detailed
questions about the medical procedures they claimed to have seen outside their
bodies, and noted how different procedures were used with different patients.

Further,
he set up a control group of patients who didn’t experience an NDE, asking them
to describe what they thought a resuscitation would be like. In this way, he
could compare the accuracy of both groups and judge how likely it would be for
patients to guess the correct details.

Consistent
with his approach, Sabom’s chapter on naturalistic explanations includes not
only discussions of physiological explanations such as anoxia and hypoxia, but
also shows why it’s unlikely that patients consciously or subconsciously
fabricated their stories.
(8)  

Some
people suspect that NDE researchers may make things up or fudge their data to
get attention and try to publish a bestseller. But this seems highly unlikely
for Sabom. At the time of publication, he taught Cardiology at Emory
University’s prestigious school of medicine. Publishing a bogus book based on
bogus data would be a sure way to lose face and potential advancement in such
an institution. He also published many articles on NDEs in peer-reviewed
journals, so that his work was open for critique and replication among his
peers. 

Overall,
the book was well written, well argued, and well organized.   

Science
and the Near-Death Experience,
Chris Carter, 2010
-
The foreword by
Neal Grossman, long-term philosophy professor at the
University of Illinois, comes out blasting with the verbal equivalent of an
M-16 machine gun. He’s hopping mad that so many of his colleagues hold
tenaciously to their naturalistic paradigms, while refusing to look at the
evidence for paranormal activity. According to Grossman, NDE research hasn’t been
examined and found wanting; rather, it’s been found uncomfortable and left
unexamined.

After
the foreword, author Chris Carter turns down the heat and coolly weighs
documented evidence for and against the validity of near-death experiences. He
does a fantastic job of bringing together much of the research done prior to
2010. His undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford prepared him well to
do serious research. It is a great book for dealing with naturalistic
objections to the validity of NDEs.

Dying
to Live: Near-Death Experiences,
Susan Blackmore, 1993
-
Blackmore was at one time a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University
of the West of England, having studied psychology, physiology, and
parapsychology. She is an outspoken atheist and arguably the leading authority
on naturalistic explanations of NDEs. In
Dying to Live
, Blackmore sets
forth a case for her naturalistic “dying brain hypothesis.”

Her
two-page preface comes across strident and opinionated (e.g., “Science tells us
that death is the end….”) making a fascinating contrast to professor Grossman’s
strident introduction to Carter’s book (“…science has in fact already
established that consciousness can exist independent of the brain…”).