Near_death_experience

A near-death experience (NDE) refers to a broad range of personal experiences associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations ranging from detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, extreme fear, total serenity, security, or warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light, which some people interpret as a deity¹ Some see NDEs as a paranormal and spiritual glimpse into the afterlife.

Such cases are usually reported after an individual has been pronounced clinically dead, or otherwise very close to death, hence the entitlement near-death experience. Many NDE reports, however, originate from events that are not life threatening. With recent developments in cardiac resuscitation techniques, the number of NDEs reported has increased. Most of the scientific community regards such experiences as hallucinatory,²³⁴ while paranormal specialists and some mainstream scientists claim them to be evidence of an afterlife.⁵⁶⁷

Characteristics

In some cases, a NDE any particular person experiences varies depending on the beliefs that the person held^{citation needed}. Children, who typically do not have enough time to develop strongly towards one faith, had very limited NDEs. Examples of this include a boy simply having talked to his brother in his NDE and a daughter having a conversation with her mother.¹²¹³ The phenomenology of an NDE usually includes physiological, psychological and alleged transcendental aspects.¹⁴ Typically, the experience follows a distinct progression:¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

Some people have also experienced extremely distressing NDEs, which can manifest in forewarning of emptiness or a sense of dread towards the cessation of their life.

According to the Rasch model-validated NDE scale, a "core" near-death experience encompasses peace, joy, and harmony, followed by insight and mystical or religious experiences.¹⁸ The most intense NDEs are reported to have an awareness of things occurring in a different place or time, and some of these observations are said to have been evidential.

Clinical circumstances that are thought to lead to an NDE include conditions such as: cardiac arrest, shock in postpartum loss of blood or in perioperative complications, septic or anaphylactic shock, electrocution, coma, intracerebral haemorrhage or cerebral infarction, attempted suicide, near-drowning or asphyxia, apnoea, and serious depression.¹⁷ Many NDEs occur after a crucial experience (e.g. when a patient can hear that he or she is declared to be dead by a doctor or nurse), or when a person has the subjective impression to be in a fatal situation (e.g. during a close call automobile accident). In contrast to common belief, attempted suicides do not lead more often to unpleasant NDEs than unintended near-death situations.¹⁹

Stages

Ring stated, however, that 60% experienced stage 1, but only 10% experienced stage 5.²⁰²¹

Research

Interest in the NDE was originally spurred by the research of such pioneers as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, George Ritchie, P.M.H. Atwater, and Raymond Moody Jr. Moody's book Life After Life, which was released in 1975, and brought a great deal of attention to the topic of NDEs.²² This was soon followed by the establishment of the International Association for Near-death Studies (IANDS), founded in 1978, in order to meet the needs of early researchers and those with NDE experiences within this field of research. Today the association includes researchers, health care professionals, NDE-experiencers and people close to experiencers, as well as other interested people. One of its main goals is to promote responsible and multi-disciplinary investigation of near-death and similar experiences.

Later researchers, such as Bruce Greyson, Kenneth Ring, and Michael Sabom, introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting. The medical community has been somewhat reluctant to address the phenomenon of NDEs, and money granted for research has been relatively scarce.²² However, although the research was not always welcomed by the general academic community, both Greyson and Ring made significant contributions in order to increase the respectability of near-death research.²³ Major contributions to the field include the construction of a Weighted Core Experience Index²⁰ in order to measure the depth of the near-death experience, and the construction of the Greyson near-death experience scale,²⁴ in order to differentiate between subjects that are more or less likely to have experienced a classical NDE. The NDE-scale also aims to differentiate between what the field claims are "true" NDEs and syndromes or stress responses that are not related to an NDE, such as the similar incidents experienced by sufferers of epilepsy. Greyson's NDE-scale was later validated using Rasch model scaling.¹⁸

Other contributors to the research on near-death experiences come from the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry. Greyson (1997) has also brought attention to the near-death experience as a focus of clinical attention, while Morse et al. (1985; 1986) have investigated near-death experiences in a pediatric population.

Neuro-biological factors in the experience have been investigated by researchers within the field of medical science and psychiatry (Mayank and Mukesh, 2004; Jansen, 1995; Thomas, 2004). Among the researchers and commentators who tend to emphasize a naturalistic and neurological base, for the experience, are the British psychologist Susan Blackmore (1993) and the founding publisher of Skeptic, Michael Shermer (1998).

Among the scientific and academic journals that have published, or are regularly publishing new research on the subject of NDEs, are: Journal of Near-Death Studies, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, British Journal of Psychology, American Journal of Disease of Children, Resuscitation, The Lancet, Death Studies, and the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

In September 2008, it was announced that 25 UK and US hospitals will examine near-death studies in 1,500 heart attack patients-survivors. The 3 years study, co-ordinated by Southampton University, hopes to determine if people without heartbeat or brain activity can have an out-of-body experience with veridical visual perceptions.²⁵ This study follows on from an earlier 18-month pilot project.²⁶

Variance in NDE studies

The prevalence of NDEs has been variable in the studies that have been performed. According to the Gallup and Proctor survey in 1980-1981, of a representative sample of the American population, data showed that 15% had an NDE.²⁷ Though, Knoblauch in 2001 performed a more selective study in Germany and found that 4% of the sample population had experienced an NDE.²⁸ However, the information gathered from these studies may be subjected to the broad timeframe and location of the investigation.

Perera et al in 2005 conducted a telephone survey of a representative sample of the Australian population, as part of the Roy Morgan Catibus Survey, and concluded that 8.9% of the population had experienced an NDE.²⁹ In a more clinical setting, van Lommel et al (2001), a cardiologist from Netherlands, studied a group of patients who had suffered cardiac arrests and who were successfully revived. They found that 18% of these patients had an NDE, with 12% of those being core experiences.

According to Martens (1994), the only satisfying method to address the NDE-issue would be an international multicentric data collection within the framework for standardized reporting of cardiac arrest events. The use of cardiac-arrest criteria as a basis for NDE research has been a common approach among the European branch of the research field.³⁰

Biological analysis and theories

In the 1990s, Dr. Rick Strassman conducted research on the psychedelic drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) at the University of New Mexico. Strassman advanced the theory that a massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or near-death was the cause of the near-death experience phenomenon. Only two of his test subjects reported NDE-like aural or visual hallucinations, although many reported feeling as though they had entered a state similar to the classical NDE. His explanation for this was the possible lack of panic involved in the clinical setting and possible dosage differences between those administered and those encountered in actual NDE cases. All subjects in the study were also very experienced users of DMT and/or other psychedelic/entheogenic agents. Some speculators consider that if subjects without prior knowledge on the effects of DMT had been used during the experiment, it is possible more volunteers would have reported feeling as though they had experienced an NDE.

Dr. Karl Jansen, a New Zealand-born psychiatrist, has reproduced the effects of NDEs through the use of ketamine, thus giving strong evidence that near death experiences are simply a set of physical responses. ³¹

Critics have argued that neurobiological models often fail to explain NDEs that result from close brushes with death, where the brain does not actually suffer physical trauma, such as a near-miss automobile accident. Such events may however have neurobiological effects caused by stress.

In a new theory devised by Kinseher in 2006, the knowledge of the Sensory Autonomic System is applied in the NDE phenomenon. His theory states that the experience of looming death is an extremely strange paradox to a living organism - and therefore it will start the NDE: during the NDE, the individual becomes capable of "seeing" the brain performing a scan of the whole episodic memory (even prenatal experiences), in order to find a stored experience which is comparable to the input information of death. All these scanned and retrieved bits of information are permanently evaluated by the actual mind, as it is searching for a coping mechanism out of the potentially fatal situation. Kinseher feels this is the reason why a near-death experience is so unusual.

The theory also states that out-of-body experiences, accompanied with NDEs, are an attempt by the brain to create a mental overview of the situation and the surrounding world. The brain then transforms the input from sense organs and stored experience (knowledge) into a dream-like idea about oneself and the surrounding area.

Whether or not these experiences are hallucinatory, they do have a profound impact on the observer. Many psychologists not necessarily pursuing the paranormal, such as Susan Blackmore, have recognized this. These scientists are not trying to debunk the experience, but are instead searching for biological causes of NDEs.³²

Effects

Near-death experiences can have tremendous effects on the people who have them, their families, and medical workers. Changes in values and beliefs often occur in the experiencer after a near-death experience, including changes in personality and outlook on life, such as a greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, greater compassion for others, a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding, and a desire to learn. The changes may also include an increased physical sensitivity to and diminished tolerance of light, alcohol and drugs.

Matthew Dovel, author of "My Last Breath", having had two near-death experiences, discusses the side effects associated with having had a NDE (Empathic, telepathy, clairaudience, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, animals, children, and timepieces). ³³

Spiritual viewpoints

Some view the NDE as the precursor to an afterlife experience, claiming that the NDE cannot be completely explained by physiological or psychological causes, and that consciousness can function independently of brain activity.³⁴ Many NDE-accounts seem to include elements which, according to several theorists, can only be explained by an out-of-body consciousness. For example, in one account, a woman accurately described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as a conversation that occurred while she was under general anesthesia.³⁵ In another account, from a prospective Dutch NDE study [2], a nurse removed the dentures of an unconscious heart attack victim, and was asked by him after his recovery to return them. It might be difficult to explain in conventional terms how an unconscious patient could later have recognized the nurse.³⁶

Dr. Michael Sabom reports a case about a woman who underwent surgery for an aneurysm. The woman reported an out-of-body experience that she claimed continued through a brief period of the absence of any EEG activity. If true, this would seem to challenge the belief by many that consciousness is situated entirely within the brain.³⁵

A majority of individuals who experience an NDE see it as a verification of the existence of an afterlife.³⁷ This includes those with agnostic/atheist inclinations before the experience. Many former atheists, such as the Reverend Howard Storm³⁸³⁹ have adopted a more spiritual viewpoint after their NDEs. Howard Storm's NDE might also be characterized as a distressing near-death experience. The distressing aspects of some NDE's are discussed more closely by Greyson & Bush (1992).

Greyson claims that "No one physiological or psychological model by itself explains all the common features of NDE. The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain."⁴⁰

A few people feel that research on NDEs occurring in the blind can be interpreted to support an argument that consciousness survives bodily death. Dr. Kenneth Ring claims in the book "Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind" that up to 80% of his sample studied reported some visual awareness during their NDE or out of body experience.⁴¹ Skeptics however question the accuracy of their visual awareness.⁴²

Some research has suggested that unconscious patients can overhear conversations even if the hospital machines aren't registering any brain activity. Research conducted at Sheffield University lead to a finding that the release of adrenaline caused by tissue damage during surgery may cause this.⁴³ Recent findings have also shown that persons diagnosed in a "persistent vegetative state" can communicate through their thoughts.⁴⁴

Religious and physiological views

There are many religious and physiological views about NDEs. The NDE is often cited as evidence for the existence of the human soul, the afterlife, heaven and hell, ideas that appear in many religious traditions. On the other hand, skeptical commentators view NDEs as purely neurological and chemical phenomena occurring in the brain. From this perspective NDEs are the result of purely physiological and neurobiological mechanisms. The imagery in the experiences also varies within cultures.⁴⁵⁴⁶⁴⁷

Contents

Characteristics

Stages

Research

Variance in NDE studies

Biological analysis and theories

Effects

Spiritual viewpoints

Religious and physiological views

See also

Interviews

References

Further reading

Personal experiences

Fiction

External links

As an afterlife experience

Neutral

As a physiological and psychological experience