Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (8 page)

Other
shared experiences may include portions of the deceased’s life review, so that
they see and experience friends of the deceased that they never knew. One
experiencer subsequently looked in a year book and recognized people first seen
in the life review.

Since
these experiences come unexpected, researchers can’t attribute them to wish
fulfillment. And even if some fervently wish to see someone’s soul depart, it’s
unlikely that they’d share such unexpected elements as distortions in the room,
which were reported in many unrelated cases.
(55)

When
I read Moody’s recent book on shared experiences, I assumed that such
experiences were pretty rare. Only Moody, I reasoned, could come up with a
large collection of shared experiences, since he’s interviewed thousands of people
with NDEs over his lifetime.

Thus
I was surprised that in interviewing my own close contacts, I found one of my
relatives, a retired history teacher who holds a masters degree, telling me of his
own shared death experience. Bucky woke at 3:00 AM feeling an extreme heaviness
on his chest, much like people report in a heart attack. He saw a light in the
distance, then came out of his body and looked down at his body from the
viewpoint of the ceiling and observed some celestial beings. (From this vantage
point, the light was now behind him.) He experienced the extreme peace reported
by so many in NDEs. He came to in his bed, in a serious sweat, and immediately
the phone rang. His father, who lived 90 miles away and had not been ill, had
suddenly died of a heart attack.
(56)

Reports
of the shared death experience seem to take the evidence to a new level, since
more than one person can often testify to experiencing the same paranormal
phenomena. And again, since friends and family weren’t experiencing the
psychological and physiological symptoms of dying, you can hardly attribute it
to anoxia or another characteristic of dying brains. Moody shares scores of
these accounts, many of them containing corroborating evidence, in his 2010
book,
Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One’s Passage from This Life to
the Next
.    

Exhibit
#
8 - Face to face interviews have a strong impact on
researchers.

Dr.
Moody says that before his interviews, he would have dismissed such tales out
of hand. The interviews changed his mind.
(57)
Dr. van Lommel was a
convinced materialist, but never forgot that extremely emotional patient who
came back from a cardiac arrest speaking of “a tunnel, colors, a light, a
beautiful landscape, and music.”
(58)
Dr. Rawlings originally regarded
most of the NDE stories he heard as “fantasy or conjecture or imagination,”
until one of his patients repeatedly died and resuscitated, each time reporting
with great emotion what he was experiencing on the other side. The genuineness
of the patient compelled him to take the experience seriously.
(59)

One
of the men I interviewed was a successful, intelligent, respected,
self-confident man of about 60 years. I started the interview with friendly
chitchat, then asked him about his experience. He choked up. I don’t mean I saw
a hint of a tear in his eye as he talked. I mean he couldn’t speak at all until
he reined in his emotions. He apologized and took a few more moments to regain
his composure.

To
me, from the perspective of the interviewer, I had no doubt that he was profoundly
sincere – absolutely certain he’d left his body, entered another dimension, and
spoken to three beings about whether or not to return to earth. He said it was
“absolutely distinct from a dream.” What he experienced was real, powerful,
unforgettable, and life-changing.

While
this may at first seem like a rather subjective point, remember that in a court
of law the apparent sincerity of the witness can legitimately count as
evidence. If a woman appears to be genuinely scared of her husband, the judge may
issue a restraining order. Of course, she may be a great liar and actress, and
with NDE reports, each case should be screened for attention seekers.

On
the one hand, little Colton (
Heaven is for Real
) seemed to be innocently
childlike in his reports. On the other hand, my skeptical side tells me that
children like attention, and Colton’s descriptions of heaven provided plenty of
it! That doesn’t necessarily invalidate his testimony, but we’d be unwise to
ignore this potential motivation. In the case of certain ministers, a YouTube
interview dramatizing their NDEs might be just the thing to rejuvenate their
book sales.  

But
in the case of most NDE reports, there’s scant motivation for lying. As we’ve
seen, the typical hospital patient is extremely reluctant to share her
experience, as is borne out by many studies. They don’t stand to get a cash reward
or a respectability badge for claiming to have been to heaven and back. In
fact, they have very strong motives for
not
reporting the event or for
lying by claiming “it was only a vivid dream.”

If
you’re interested in this line of evidence, look for several intelligent,
level-headed people who’ve experienced NDEs. I found a dozen by simply asking
friends and family members if they knew people who’d had NDEs. I personally interviewed
some of them. Seeing NDErs’ sincerity – their utterly convincing inflections
and expressions – led many interviewers to conclude, “They’re totally convinced
that they visited the other side. Had I had their experience, I’d likely
believe just as strongly that I’d been to the other side. So why should I wait
for my own experience in order to believe?”
(60)   

Moody,
reflecting on the many people he interviewed, notes,

“No one has seen fit to proselytize, to
try to convince others of the realities he experienced. Indeed, I have found
that the difficulty is quite the reverse: People are naturally very reticent to
tell others about what happened to them.”
(61)

“…many have remarked that they realized
from the very beginning that others would think they were mentally unstable if
they were to relate their experiences.”
(62)  

Exhibit
#
9 - The deaf “hear.”

Listen
to the account of a boy who was born deaf, describing his near-death
experience:

“I was born profoundly deaf. All my
relatives can hear, and they always communicate with me through sign language.
Now I had direct communication with about twenty ancestors via some kind of
telepathy. An overwhelming experience….”
(63)

“Overwhelming”
indeed. He’s neither heard nor understood verbal communication. Yet he finds
himself communicating effortlessly, not through sign language, but directly
mind to mind, without learning a new form of communication. This in no way fits
what we know of the workings of the brain. 

Exhibit
#10
- The color-blind see colors.

I’m
color-blind. Actually, I can see some colors, enough to understand the concept
of differentiating colors. But it’s serious enough that the last time I took a
color-blind test, the nurse laughed at me: “Come on! Surely you can see
something
there!”

Thus,
if I ever have a near-death experience, I’ll likely be astounded at the range
of colors. Although those who aren’t color-blind also mention seeing new
colors, the range seems particularly astounding to the color-blind.

Consider
this NDE:

“I can distinguish the primary colors,
but pastels all look the same to me. But suddenly I could see them, all kinds
of different shades. Don’t ask me to name them because I lack the necessary
experience for that.”
(64)
 

Reflecting
upon this phenomenon, although I understand the concept of colors, I can’t even
conceive of the colors I can’t see. Thus, if I were to encounter a
life-threatening situation, I have neither a visual expectation of certain
colors (psychological preparation), nor memories of the elusive colors for my
brain to pull from (to be revealed in stimulation of the brain). Predictably, I
don’t see new colors in my dreams.

Once
again, naturalistic hypotheses seem inadequate to account for this experience.

Exhibit
#1
1 - The blind see.(65)   

People
born blind don’t dream in visual images. Even those who lose their sight during
their first five years tend to not have visual imagery later in life.

Yet,
when researchers studied 31 blind people (nearly half of them blind from birth)
who reported NDEs, they found:   

• “…blind persons, including those blind from birth,
  do report classic NDEs of the kind common to sighted persons; that the
  great preponderance of blind persons claim to see during NDEs and OBEs [out
  of body experiences]; and that occasionally claims of visually-based
  knowledge that could not have been obtained by normal means can be
  independently corroborated.”
  (66)  
  

• “…inspection reveals no obvious differences among
  sight subgroups with respect to the frequency of NDE elements. Thus,
  whether one is blind from birth, loses one's sight in later life, or
  suffers from severe visual impairment, the type of NDE reported appears to
  be much the same and is not structurally different from those described by
  sighted persons.”
  

• “Like sighted experiencers, our blind respondents
  described to us both perceptions of this world and otherworldly scenes,
  often in fulsome, fine-grained detail, and sometimes with a sense of
  extremely sharp, even subjectively perfect, acuity.”
  (67)
  

Take
the case of Vicki, who was born blind and at the age of twenty-two fell into a
coma after a car wreck. According to Vicki,

“I’ve never seen
anything, no light, no shadows, no nothing…. And in my dreams I don’t see any
visual impressions. It’s just taste, touch, sound, and smell. But no visual
impressions of anything.”

After
the wreck, she found herself viewing, with perfect clarity, a scene in an
emergency room where a medical team was frantically working to revive a person.
She recognized her wedding ring (which she knew by touch) and began to realize
that the body was hers and that she must have died. She went up through the
ceiling and saw trees, birds, and people for the first time. “…it was
incredible, really beautiful, and I was overwhelmed by that experience because
I couldn’t really imagine what light was like.” Before coming back, she went on
to meet some people who had preceded her in death.
(68)  

Dr.
van Lommel reflects upon Vicki’s experience:

“This is impossible
according to current medical knowledge…. Vicki’s reported observations could
not have been the product of sensory perception or of a functioning (visual)
cerebral cortex, nor could they have been a figment of the imagination given
their verifiable aspects.”
(69)  

Regarding
evidence of life after death, these experiences are quite compelling in several
respects. If these reports are legitimate (and the authors give sound reasons
for trusting these sources), then all of the naturalistic hypotheses, whether
they be psychological, physiological, or whatever, fall woefully short.
Psychologically, those born blind are in no way primed for a visual experience
of this nature, since they have no understanding of even light and dark, much
less colors, shades of colors, textures, visual distance, etc. Physiologically,
they have no visual memories to pull from. Electric stimulation to parts of the
brain might bring up memories of tastes and sounds, but not visual memories.

If
the blind can see in a near-death experience, they’re not seeing through their
physical eyes, which lie closed and useless on a hospital bed or beside a
wrecked car. They’re apparently seeing through the upgraded “eyes” of a
spiritual body that no longer suffer the limitations of the damaged set of
goods that they left behind. 

Naturalists
should consider the near-death experiences of the blind as a serious challenge
to their worldview.

Exhibit
#1
2 - It’s extremely convincing to the one who experiences
it, completely unlike a dream.

Compiling
the results of five independent studies on people with near-death experiences,
only 27 percent of the subjects believed in life after death before their NDE.
But even twenty plus years after the NDE, after they’ve had plenty of time to
analyze the event from every angle and attempt to explain it away, 90 percent
of them reported believing in life after death. It seems that the more years
they have to reflect, the more they believe in an afterlife.
(70)
In one
study, while only 38 percent believed in life after death before their NDE, 100
percent believed after the NDE. Needless to say, this is a huge shift in a
fundamental belief to be caused by a single life event.
(71)