Chapter 1
Near-Death Experiences
Their Universal, Cultural, and Individual Features
What Is a Near-Death Experience?
According to research by the British neurophysiologist Peter Fenwick, NDEs occur in approximately "10% of people who come close to death, or who survive actual clinical death." Tens of thousands of accounts have been collected by researchers in the nearly fifty years since the study of NDEs became formalized. Reports are found in both technologically advanced civilizations and in small-scale societies, from ancient to modern times, in all parts of the world, appearing variously in religious, literary, anthropological, scientific, and medical literature.
While even the most skeptical of researchers acknowledge that there are a number of typical subexperiences that make up the NDE, they do not always agree on what they are. Various attempts to define the experience by identifying the most consistently recurring elements have not proven wholly successful. The American psychologist Kenneth Ring, for example, defined the core experience as feelings of peace and well-being, out-of-body experience (OBE), entering darkness, seeing bright light, and entering the light—excluding highly recurrent elements such as meeting other deceased individuals and reaching a border or limit. Others have reduced the supposedly universal core to but two elements, though these differ depending on the researcher: the British philosopher of religion Mark Fox suggested simply darkness and light; the American sociologist James McClenon isolated "seeing other beings and other realms"; while the Australian sociologist Allan Kellehear highlighted journeying to other worlds (usually an idealized mirror image of Earth) and meeting fellow spirits. Kellehear also pointed out, however, that the OBE may be taken for granted in almost all descriptions, for NDE’ers do not claim that their experiences occurred in the physical body.
Other commonly reported features are "the subjective sense of being dead," "beautiful colors," hearing others discuss one’s own death, a loud noise, feelings of joy, a sense of profound wisdom or universal understanding, heightened senses and clarity, the impression of having an ethereal body, acceleration of time and thought, precognition and clairvoyance, telepathic communication with other spiritual beings, a sense of belonging or that one has returned "home," a life review accompanied by a sense of moral evaluation or self-judgment, being instructed or deciding to return, returning (often reluctantly), and positive effects on the life of the NDE’er.
Perhaps the most useful way of thinking about the experience is that of the American theologian Carol Zaleski, who characterized the NDE as "a catalogue of assorted motifs." To redefine the "core" of the experience as a changeable collection of possible elements, drawn upon differently by different individuals to comprise the overall experience, prevents the imposition of structure and order where none may exist. It also allows for a purely descriptive consideration of the NDE, because we shouldn’t judge an account based on its content, or whether it measures up to some hypothetical (and mythical) prototype. Instead, we should judge by its context—that is, whether or not the individual was considered to be temporarily dead or near death and reported having undergone various spiritual episodes prior to revival. The nature of those experiences will always vary. In other words, our popular stereotypes about what NDEs are like are not always accurate.
The issue of whether the NDE constitutes evidence for survival after physical death is separate from the question of their impact on beliefs, though it is relevant to the metaphysical theories discussed in chapter 11. The most comprehensive attempt to explain the NDE in materialist terms has been by the British psychologist Susan Blackmore, who claims that it is the hallucinatory result of a combination of psychological and neurophysiological events and processes of the dying brain. Such perspectives have been criticized for a priori reductionism and for being dismissive of the aspects of NDEs that they cannot explain. There are numerous claims of evidential out-of-body experiences, in which NDE’ers report having seen and heard things while clinically dead—and from places or perspectives impossible from the vantage point of their bodies—that were later independently verified. There are reports of children encountering deceased relatives they had never met and of NDE’ers who discover the death of a friend or relative by meeting them during the NDE. There are even some claims of visions of the future that are later verified. While impressive, such claims are technically anecdotal and without empirical replication in laboratory settings—a criterion for widespread acceptance in the scientific community.
Metaphysical interpretations of the NDE—by which we mean ideas and concepts beyond observable physical reality—have been criticized for a perceived lack of scientific logic and for not being based on evidence gathered in rigorous, controlled testing. However, Fenwick stresses the significance of the fact that NDEs in cardiac arrest cases can occur when the pateint has a flat EEG reading, when there is "no possibility of the brain creating images" and "no brain-based memory functioning," meaning that "it should be impossible to have clearly structured and lucid experiences." These arguments have apparently been bolstered by the research of the British resuscitation expert Sam Parnia. He seems to have shown that consciousness can persist when no brain activity is detectable, actually during the period of clinical death prior to revival. One of his cardiac patients accurately described his own resuscitation, which he claimed to have witnessed while out of body, including the sound of a defibrillator machine. This allowed researchers to pinpoint the time of the event as having occurred during his temporary "death." In a study conducted in a Welsh hospital, intensive care nurse Penny Sartori found that only patients who had OBEs could accurately describe the process of their resuscitation.
Whatever the case, in this book we seek neutral ground, adopting the position that whatever their nature, NDEs are part of human experience. This is attested by the fact that accounts of them are found around the world and throughout history. NDEs are not determined by culture, religion, sex, age, or other demographic factors. Though individuals may be influenced by "imagery and metaphor" in popular and religious culture, it has been found that prior knowledge of the NDE actually decreases the likelihood of having one. Nor is there any significant difference between Western NDEs reported before and after 1975, when the phenomenon was popularized and the term coined by the American psychiatrist Raymond Moody. Near-death experiences in children are largely consistent with those of adults, further demonstrating that it is not mainly a matter of cultural conditioning (though, of course, children are not free of cultural influences—even cartoons can feature afterlife and OBE imagery). NDEs also occur in congenitally blind individuals who nevertheless report visual perception during the experience.
Near-Death Experiences across Cultures
The issue of universality is controversial in near-death studies, with some researchers emphasizing cross-cultural difference at the expense of similarity. For example, in his assessment of perhaps the earliest Western NDE account that explicitly claims to be factual (that of Cleonymous of Athens in around 310 BCE), the Dutch historian Jan Bremmer writes that the only similarity between the account and modern NDEs is a "feeling of drifting away." This is despite clear references to typical NDE elements such as OBE, meeting deceased relatives, moral evaluation assisted by mystical or divine beings, and clairvoyance.
Likewise, in their study of Chinese NDEs, the physicians Feng Zhi-ying and Liu Jian-xun interpreted some common NDE elements as being inconsistent with the (hypothetical) Western model because the descriptions were influenced by cultural and individual idiosyncrasies. For example, sensations of weightlessness and "feeling estranged from the body" must surely be equated with the OBE. "Unusually vivid thoughts," a feeling that thought has accelerated, a sense of peace and euphoria, and a life review are all standard NDE elements that were reported by their subjects.
Similarly, the American Buddhist and neuroscientist Todd Murphy writes that there is no being of light in Thai NDEs—despite reports of the Buddha appearing as a star and of encounters with "spiritual lights." He also states that Thai NDE’ers do not report feelings of bliss, ecstasy, peace, and the like, but rather "pleasantness, comfort, a sense of beauty and happiness." Rather than seeing these as analogous emotional states, he sees discontinuity. Even encounters with deceased friends and relatives are classed as dissimilarities because they don’t specifically greet the NDE’ers, but rather instruct them. Murphy’s conclusion that "accounts of Western NDEs would seem to be useless in helping Thais know what to expect at their deaths" is not supported by the Thai references to OBE, traveling in spiritual form to another realm, life review with moral evaluation, encounters with divine and mystical presences, positive emotions, transcendent feelings and an impression of knowing "all the truths of the universe," visions of the future, deceased relatives, and being instructed to return.