Life After Death: The View From The Edge

The best empirical evidence for life after death comes from people who have had "near death experiences" (NDEs). These are people who have gone to the edge and come back with a report. Certainly they haven't crossed over; in that sense, death remains, as Shakespeare put it, the undiscovered country. But so-called NDEs give us the best chance to make at least an initial map of that unknown territory.

NDEs were first publicized in 1975 by physician Raymond Moody in Life After Life. Moody described 150 cases of people very near death, or pronounced clinically dead, who reported experiences of moving through dark tunnels, seeing themselves from outside their bodies, encountering the spirits of dead relatives and friends, seeing celestial beings, being dazzled by a bright light, reviewing their whole life in an instant, and then reaching an impassable barrier before being returned to their earthly bodies.

Recognizing that his reports would sound fantastic to many, Moody cited numerous examples from history to show that NDEs were not uncommon. Plato reports one in the last pages of his Republic. The eighth-century monk Bede gives a similar account in his history of the English people. The Tibetan Book of the Dead instructs dying people to prepare to give an account of their lives as they go through the darkness into the radiant light of pure reality. Even the atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer wrote of a near death experience in which he found himself in a realm where "the laws of nature had ceased to function" and where he was "confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright."

Gallup surveys and studies around the world have subsequently shown that such experiences occur frequently. The stunning implication is that consciousness can survive the termination of bodily functions -- that death may not be "final exit."

Recognizing the implications of NDEs, atheists have labored hard to refute them. One explanation, favored by Carl Sagan in Broca's Brain, is that at the end of life we, in a sense, return to the womb and once again experience the original birth process. An ingenious idea: it would account for several features of NDEs, such as the tunnel, the sensation of floating, the movement from darkness to light.

But Sagan's hypothesis has been largely discredited by the work of philosopher Carl Becker, who draws on research in the field of infant perception to show that newborns cannot see anything as they emerge from the womb. Even if they could, newborns don't have developed mental faculties and cannot be expected to have recollections of the birth process. In any case, the birth canal is not like a tunnel through which a child gracefully floats; it is a tight, compressed passage from which a newborn emerges, typically head first and sometimes chafed or bruised.

A second explanation is that NDEs reflect distorted brain states. Psychologist Ron Siegel suggests they are dreamlike experiences of a kind that people have when they take hallucinogenic or mind-altering drugs. Those who take recreational drugs do experience a range of perceptions from wild colors to soaring sensations to drowsiness to decreased vision. During this time however, most of them know they are on drugs. Also they don't have anything like the coherence of the near death experience. Finally people who have NDEs aren't typically on recreational drugs -- many aren't even on anesthetics, narcotics or painkillers.

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger claims he can simulate the NDE by placing a helmet on subjects and electrically stimulating parts of their brains. Persinger's helmet is a hit-or-miss device; atheist Richard Dawkins tried it, and it had no effect on him. Others have a spiritual feeling but not the particular features of the NDE. The bigger problem is that this is an artificially induced state. If I tell you that I am being blinded by the sun, you cannot prove this is a mental illusion by showing me that you can also blind me with a flashlight. NDEs not only occur with no external inducement; they also happen to people whose hearts and in some cases brains have stopped functioning altogether.

Perhaps the most plausible explanation for NDEs is given by psychologist Susan Blackmore, who seeks to account for them through her "dying brain hypothesis." Blackmore suggests that when the brain breaks down, its mechanisms of pattern recognition continue to generate images. In other words, the brain attempts to reconstruct a memory model of reality that seems perfectly real, even though it does not reflect anything outside the brain itself.

The strength of Blackmore's theory is that it explains important features of the NDE. The tunnel is the result of constriction in the visual pathways. The lights are a kind of special effect generated by a brain cortex that is deprived of oxygen. A breakdown in body image and the brain's model of reality can account for the feeling of being outside one's body. The life review is a consequence of the brain's memory systems trying to organize themselves as they fail and falter. The same memory systems conjure up images of deceased relatives and friends. Finally, the impression of timelessness is fostered by a self that is disintegrating and relinquishing all experiential notions of time and place.

The only problem is that Blackmore offers no empirical evidence that dying brains actually generate all these experiences. It seems obvious that they don't, because if they did, then virtually everyone who is dying would have an NDE! Moreover, as those who have watched a loved one die can easily testify, dying brains tend to produce faded recollections, incoherence and disorientation. These symptoms are radically different from the perceptual clarity and bliss of the typical NDE.

If NDEs are the result of a dying brain, then a breakdown of mental faculties has already taken place, but in fact most people who report NDEs are now living normal lives. So how have their brains reversed the dissolution and gotten all their normal perceptual faculties back? This reversal defies medical explanation and Blackmore provides none.

The bottom line is that near death experiences have so far withstood all efforts at refutation. The critics continue to speculate -- it may be this and it may be that -- but on balance NDEs suggest that consciousness can and sometimes does survive the cessation of heart and even brain functions. True, NDEs don't tell us much about what the afterlife is really like. Nor do they indicate how long this postmortem awareness continues: "survival" is not the same thing as "immortality." Near death experiences do seem to show, however, that death is not always the end; there may be something more.

Dinesh D'Souza's new book Life After Death: The Evidence is published by Regnery.

 

Comments

[rdosser]

The best empirical evidence for alien abduction comes from people who have had "close encounters of the fourth kind" (CEFKs).

[Patrician]

Sorry, I don't believe NDE's. They feel true to the person involved. I was not in the room with my husband when he died, but I think that if he had signed a form that asked the medical facility to bring him back, he perhaps would have been an NDE. Instead, he collapsed from advanced Parkinson's, congestive heart and kidney failure--some combination of these--and the fact his oxygen supply was not functioning (he interrupted it) because he knew that with all his failures he was dying.

Death is hard to accept. I, as much as anyone, want my man back. But he died. He really died. I wish I could dream up an, "Oh, he really didn't" scenario, but he did." I have been racked with grief, but I will not go down the road of denial. I think dying (likely medicated) people have all the brain firings that I have in my wild, REM dreaming.
I think for each person near or dying,this could be present. But death is death. Near death is near death. Not necessarily a sign that they were on the steps of heaven, and had to turn back. My dream scapes are so wild at times, I could give you any wild scenario under the sun.

[Marcus01]

YouTube has a series of clips of an interview with Dr Michael Newton. Newton is a master hypnotherapist and counselor who was also an avowed atheist until he inadvertently took a client into a past-life trauma (a bayoneting in WWI) while trying to find the cause of the client's severe pain. Pretty interesting stuff.

Newton is no longer an atheist and has changed his specialty from behavior modification to client's accounts of between-lives experiences, all of which are remarkably consistent between hundreds of people.

Suggestion? Possibly, although Newton is highly qualified and takes precautions against leading subjects. His books are fascinating reading.

Another interesting book is "Your Soul's Plan" by Robert Schwartz, which details pre-life planning. In it he explains, through case histories, how we arrange our trials and challenges in advance as part of an evolutionary growth process.

The bottom line is we keep coming back, and back, and back again until we learn to get it right. Of course no one has to buy into that concept, but I think the closer we are to getting it right the more likely we are to sense that it's true.

Peace.

[TomOfVirginia]

I think that's pure silliness. Makes no more sense than astrology or any of the other pseudo-sciences that create an entire thesis of what life is about based on a few isolated bits of fact.

[Marcus01]

You may want to check out Thomas Mellon-Benedict's NDE account. (Google him) He had been dead so long rigor mortis had set in. That's pretty dead. It's also a very interesting account.

[thepianodiva]

Fascinating article, Mr. D"Souza. In regard to Blackmore's theory= "the brain attempts to reconstruct a memory model of reality that seems perfectly real, even though it does not reflect anything outside the brain itself." -how can she prove that there ever is anything outside the brain itself anyway. In other words, how can she prove there is any "outside" at all. ever.

[krocklin]

No one can answer the questions of matters like this. No more than a spider on the wall could understand calculus. We are the spiders on the wall. We cannot know, and if even if we thought we could, we would be way overestimating our capabilities.
The mysteries of life may be know by some souls, but very few of them. Hopefully we will become oneof them someday - maybe after many processes we currently don't have the means of understanding.
Even speculation is meainingless. Like a spider's on the wall.

[conservativeisaac]

Is it really so fantastic to believe that death is not the end of existence? I believe that one day science and technology will be able to follow someone into death and prove what happens. Whether it shows we pass on to another form of existence, or everything ends, it is sure to dramatically change the world. I hope for an afterlife. I hope it's a big party where there's no war or hunger or suffering of any kind. And if there isn't, I will be disappointed, but in reality I won't care, for I will have no consciousness to care. But hope is a good thing. I would encourage my fellow humans not to rule out the possibility that there is an afterlife simply because it can't be proven by science.

[IncredulousGeezer]

Why do you reckon D'Souza continually identifies people describing and analyzing their NDEs as atheists when the latter really only concerns beliefs about the existence of a diety?
I think we call all agree that there is a state called death, profoundly different from life, but whether there are elements of conscious realization in the latter should not necessarily involve the existence of a supreme being.

[SonofLiberty1]

Not only St. Bede but there are other stories about the afterlife from various Saints.

St. Faustina recalls in her Diary that some who have died, actually contacted her and asked her to pray for them.

[Ganapati]

No, seriously, seriously, seriously.
WHY, HOW could anything, "a soul" survive outside the body, be invisible, intangible, intelligent, eternal, travel through time, space and matter...and especially be unprovable?
We can believe in whatever we want, but I question "reasonably" believing.

[johnsopinion]

You're 'assuming' a soul is unprovable, and that's a belief.

[Ganapati]

I reasonably argue that it is highly unprovable.
Don't you project on me. Don/t spin my words.

[huffponewbie]

I had an NDE and am an agnostic. The experience did not lead me to seek spiritual guidance, but to become more interested in what answers science will bring us. I do believe that science will find an answer. The whole idea that because a scientist does not have the answer at the moment means that there is no scientific answer seems so ridiculous to me.

[BoiseLib]

I've been there, but I don't try to convert people to believe.

I was communicated to and felt the all encompassing joy and acceptance. My best friend hovered above his body and watched the doctor re-start his heart. We both now have zero fear of death.

My mother says she "knows" jesus will be there for her, but is completely terrified of death.

[johnsopinion]

Not surprising, actually.
You've been there, you know life doesn't end at death. Only
life as you know it..
Your mother is the product of organized religion, if not now
somewhere in her past.
Organized religions, I'm afraid, teache fear. And it splashes
out across almost all aspects of life.

[wildedge]

The division between life and death is a logica absolute - an organism is either alive or it has died.
In order to have a 'near death experience,' therefore, one has to be still alive. Therefore an NDE cannot tell us anything about what is is to have died. Whatever its origins an NDE is the product of the pocesses of a living body.
"The only problem is that Blackmore offers no empirical evidence that dying brains actually generate all these experiences. It seems obvious that they don't, because if they did, then virtually everyone who is dying would have an NDE!" - Untrue; All living processes allow for individual variation within a range - here the range could easily be from NDE to just shutting down.
Are we not tired of superstition masquerading as scientific argument?
When you'rer dead you're dead, and it is certain that one day you and I and all our readers will be dead. Speculation on whatever follows after that is a matter for theology. By all means attend the church of your choice; but spare us the pseudo-science. There are smple technical reasons having to do with logic and mathematics and the physical laws of the universe, including biological laws, that make it impossible for science to prove the existence of god, angels, or ghosts - which I recognize is the road you're asking us to take. I refuse to waste my time..

[mydwyf]

The 'division between life and death' may not be nearly as absolute as you think.

[maribelle1963]

In many cases of NDE, the patient has actually died--the heart has stopped--and then s/he returns to life again.

So they're not alive, they are dead--briefly.

[wildedge]

The organs, including the brain, are made up of millions of cells, each continuing to function after the failure of the organism as a whole, thus allowing for regeneration of the organism without loss of identity. And until the identity is lost and the cells at last cease to function in a regenerative manner, the organism is still alive.
Neither you nor mydwyf are using a biological definition of life and death - which is the only one that matters, the rest is poetry and religion.

[Tom Of Virginia]

Maribelle, you are in error. Stoppage of the heart, in and of itself, does not constitute death. Death is the "permanent and irreversible cessation of all life functions." There is no such thing as "temporary" death.

[johnsopinion]

"There are smple technical reasons .... that
make it impossible for science to prove the existence
of god, angels, or ghosts."

And they are?

I do agree about Blackmore.

[emsique]

I nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning. I woke up feeling like I was in a narrow tunnel and fought disparately to come back. This was no pleasant near death experience.

[pons1595]

I suffered from complete heart block in 2005 [Google what it is]. I clinically died 3 times in the span of an hour and half. I am alive today and have no memories of that time except complete, deep darkness. I'm just sayin' that these near death experiences may not be what you want them to be.