Near-Death Experiences, Survival, Past Lives

Near-death experiences (NDEs) command great popular interest but receive only modest discussion here on the Landscape. Obviously, if even a minuscule fraction of this vast ocean of anecdotes were actually true, it would instantly falsify every materialist theory and support (but not confirm) a host of nonphysical theories. I [RLK] am open-minded—and obviously something is going on here—but as to the core claim, I still skew skeptical.

Popular Fascination and RLK’s Stance

NDEs are out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) that are triggered during catastrophic physical trauma that leads to “death” in terms of heart stoppages, and generally feature a cluster of common characteristics: a feeling of floating above or beyond one's body; a sense of movement toward a bright light with a benevolent aura; a capacity to commune with deceased loved ones; and the presence of a spiritual Being or beings who radiate warmth and love (whose names or traits vary according to the religion or culture of the NDE experiencer). NDEs have been recorded throughout history and across cultures, often associated with mystical traditions.

Of all the requests we receive from viewers of Closer To Truth, NDEs surely rank first, and survival/past lives probably second. My [RLK] response goes something like this: “I have followed NDE accounts, both experiencers/advocates and skeptics/debunkers, but I do not find sufficient depth and diversity, beyond the obvious confirming enthusiasm of the former and the obvious denying critique of the latter, to warrant the kind of explorations we do on Closer To Truth. We are not in the business of adjudicating claims of NDEs and survival/past lives (as we are not with ESP). What we do is to explore the implications or ramifications of such claims, if they were true, from an ontological perspective and with critical thinking (which CTT does with ESP).” (For a pioneering and exploratory exception, Closer To Truth features the experimental work of Sam Parnia, a medical scientist who explores NDEs under a new name, “Recalled Experiences of Death” [Parnia, 2014; Parnia et al., 2022].)

Survival Research and Contest Evidence

While popular accounts of NDEs, such as Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, have widespread impact, they are generally not taken seriously by the scientific or medical communities (Alexander, 2014). Quite apart from the blizzard of anecdotal accounts, there have been scientific studies of NDEs, survival and past lives.

Most notable, perhaps, is the work of the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, which claims to have documented thousands of cases. Founded by Dr. Ian Stevenson and advanced by Dr. Bruce Greyson, DOPS strives to challenge the “entrenched mainstream view by rigorously evaluating empirical evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death and that mind and brain are distinct and separable” and that science needs “to accommodate genuine spiritual experiences without loss of scientific integrity” (DOPS, n.d.; “DOPS’s Consciousness Research and Theory”).

The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) was founded to support research into the survival of human consciousness after physical death. (Bigelow, 2023). BICS's essay contest to “present evidence beyond reasonable doubt,” as if in a court of law, “for the survival of consciousness after permanent physical death (‘life after death,’ or ‘the afterlife’)” attracted 204 essays and produced 29 winners.^[1]

Jeffrey Mishlove, the host of a long-running TV and web series, New/Thinking Aloud, who has a PhD in Parapsychology from Berkeley, won BICS first prize for his comprehensive presentation of the pro-survival arguments. He begins by pointing out that “a belief in postmortem survival of consciousness is common to every culture, nationality, religion, and linguistic group in every region and historical period on Earth. Every single one!” For example, American belief in life after death has been stable for 75 years at over 70%, even while religious affiliation has been dropping.

Mishlove's best evidence for postmortem survival is the big picture of what he says are nine largely independent categories “all pointing to postmortem consciousness:” near-death experience; after-death communications; reincarnation cases; peak in Darien experiences (visions of dead people who are not known at the time to be dead); instrumental trans communication (electronic devices for communication with the deceased); xenoglossy (the ability to converse in a language one has never learned); possession; mental mediumship; and physical mediumship (Mishlove, 2021).

Dr. Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist, won BICS's second prize for his reporting on recent scientific research on NDEs, especially in survivors of cardiac arrest, with “strikingly similar results and conclusions.” His claim is that NDEs seem “to be an authentic experience which cannot be simply reduced to imagination, fear of death, hallucination, psychosis, the use of drugs, or oxygen deficiency.” Using examples of nonlocal consciousness beyond the brain, for instance during a period when the brain is either non-functioning or malfunctioning, he argues that “there are now good reasons to assume that our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced or nonlocal consciousness can sometimes be experienced separately from the body.”

The general conclusion of scientific research on NDE, he says, “is indeed that our enhanced consciousness does not reside in our brain and is not limited to our brain. Our consciousness seems to be nonlocal, and our brain facilitates rather than produces the experience of that consciousness.” He concludes that “death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another” (Van Lommel, 2022).

One intriguing parapsychological critique of NDE survival stories is “super-psi” or “living agent psi,” where information is gleaned via telepathy or clairvoyance not by post-mortem communications, a position affirmed by Braude (1992) and denied by Mishlove (2021).

Scientific Critiques and Evolving Inquiry

There are, of course, many physicalist, physiological, and psychological critiques of NDEs, OBEs, life-after-death stories, and all the survival arguments; such critiques are widely available. While oxygen deprivation has been a common explanation for NDEs, more sophisticated analysis suggests “a sort of blending of conscious states: waking, rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep.”

Neurologist Kevin Nelson posits, “The physiological balance between conscious states is disrupted during the conditions of near-death, leading the brainstem arousal system controlling conscious states to blend waking and rapid eye movement consciousness into a hybrid state known as REM intrusion … [and] REM intrusion leads to many key features of near-death, including lying still, visual activation, out-of-body, and the experience's narrative qualities” (Freeman, 2023).

That NDEs are being taken more seriously by the scientific community was evidenced by a conference held by The New York Academy of Sciences, “Explorations in Consciousness: Death, Psychedelics, and Mystical Experience.” Participants describe NDEs, which are sometimes called periods of “disconnected consciousness,” as surprisingly common—according to one report, “15 percent of intensive care unit patients and up to 23 percent of survivors of cardiac arrest reported having had one” (Freeman, 2023).

The claim is that because more people survive cardiac arrests—due to substantially improved resuscitation techniques—more NDEs are reported, and the field has emerged as a legitimate one for scientific inquiry. That NDEs can be emotionally transformative provides an opportunity to examine mental health issues, both the positive feelings of enhanced compassion or purpose and the negative after-effects of bad dreams and persistent intrusive thoughts. Calling evolutionary explanations for NDEs “just-so stories,” Christof Koch said, “They may be true. They may be false. It just doesn't matter. But the fact that we do have [these] experiences—that is the remarkable thing” (Freeman, 2023).

The fact that some NDE experiencers describe a reduced fear of death does not ipso facto mean, obviously, that death is any less physically final and that consciousness is any less entirely material. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine what kinds of observations or experiments could count as scientifically dispositive that NDEs confirm post-mortem survival.

Footnote

[1]. All 29 Bigelow winning essays are here: https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/essay-contest/.