Thomas Verny is a clinical psychiatrist, academic, award-winning author, public speaker, poet and podcaster. He is the author of eight books, including the global bestseller The Secret Life of the Unborn Child and 2021’s The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness and Our Bodies.
Many years ago, as a young intern at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, I was taking a routine blood-pressure reading of a patient when he suddenly stopped breathing.
I felt for his pulse, but could not detect one. I sounded the alarm. Doctors and nurses rushed in. One doctor inserted a syringe with adrenalin directly into the patient’s heart. Another was breathing into the patient’s mouth. After about five minutes, the man opened his eyes and spoke.
A few hours later, I went to his room and asked what he remembered of the incident. He proceeded to describe, with great accuracy, like observed from above his body, the medical staff and what each was saying and doing in the room. He told me about moving through a dark tunnel and seeing a bright light in the distance. Then he regained consciousness. I did not know what to make of this experience. Only later did I learn that he had what was known as a near-death experience.
The term originated in the 19th century when a Swiss geologist documented accounts from himself and fellow climbers after a fall in the Alps. [1] Decades later, it was popularized in the 1975 book Life After Life by psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who detailed the experiences of more than 100 people who survived clinical death, but were subsequently revived.
He outlined common elements frequently reported by people who survived near-fatal situations, which included: the sensation of being outside one’s body; the perspective of one who hovers above a scene, looking down; intense feelings of peace and well-being; the absence of pain; moving through a dark, tunnellike space; seeing a bright light and feeling enveloped by it; encountering an idyllic other world; sensing a close presence; interacting with spirits or deceased relatives, or experiencing a “life review.” [2]
Near-death experiences seem to be a universal occurrence that have been documented for centuries. Cave paintings in France and Spain illustrate scenes that may represent visions of the afterlife, resembling those reported in near-death experiences. In The Republic, Plato recounts the near-death experience of a Greek soldier named Er, who, after being killed in battle, is placed on a funeral pyre. Just before cremation, he awakens and describes leaving his body and journeying with others to a realm where they were to be judged.
They have been characterized as intense psychological events with transcendental and mystical qualities, usually triggered by life-threatening situations such as a heart attack, asphyxiation, or shock. Many people recount remarkably similar stories, often involving a compelling choice: to stay in this surreal, otherworldly state – essentially remaining dead – or to return to life. Experiences like near-death encounters are also reported during severe illnesses that aren’t directly life-threatening, as well as during periods of isolation, depression, meditation or even without any clear cause.
The phenomenon has been reported even by children and toddlers. This is noteworthy because skeptics have questioned the credibility of these accounts by pointing out that they may be due to religious upbringing, but unlike adults or older children, young children or toddlers have not been exposed to religious instruction.
The majority of individuals who have near-death experiences firmly believe in the reality of the experience, both during the event and following it. This enduring belief seems to be supported by the extraordinarily vivid and stable memory of the experience. Frequently, survivors undergo a profound personal transformation. They often become more compassionate, less self-centred, more dedicated to helping others and less fearful of death.
While a sense of well-being is one of the most frequently reported aspects, it is important to acknowledge that distressing or even hellish experiences can also occur. Consistent with prior estimates, Vanessa Charland-Verville at the University of Liège, Belgium, reported that 1.4 per cent (two out of 140) of their “real NDE” group disclosed having a negative experience. [3, 4]
When exploring the subject of near-death experiences, the question arises whether they are the product of a hallucinating brain or evidence of the survival of consciousness. Many scholars do not trust theories and findings that are not grounded in what they studied in academia. Confronted with novel, unfamiliar and hard to explain phenomena such as NDEs (near-death experiences), they discount them or endeavour to find explanations based on their traditional belief system. The old saying, “Trying to pour new wine into old bottles,” seems to apply.
Our ideas about death define how we live our life.
— Dag Hammarskjold
A central tenet of neuroscience holds that all human experience arises from the brain.[5] It is therefore not surprising that all the prevalent scientific explanations focus on brain neurochemistry.
During cardiac arrest, which is the most frequent trigger of NDEs, the brain is deprived of oxygen resulting in loss of all body and brain stem reflexes, respiration and consciousness. [6] Most scientists explain hallucinations and a sense of peace and bliss by the blockage of glutamate receptors in the brain (glutamate is the human brain’s primary excitatory neurotransmitter) and the release of endorphins by the pituitary gland and hypothalamus, both located in the brain. Similarly, they explain the experience of being in a tunnel and seeing a distant light by anoxia of the retina. [7]
According to Ronald Siegel, “The descriptions given by dying persons are virtually identical to descriptions given by persons experiencing hallucinations, drug induced or otherwise.” [8] Carl Sagan states that some of the near-death experiences can be associated with “a wiring defect in the human neuroanatomy that under certain conditions always leads to the same illusion of astral projection/out-of-body experience.” [9]
Other researchers have proposed that hypercapnia and hypokalemia (too much carbon dioxide and too little potassium) [10] and administration of sedatives [11] are responsible for out-of-body (OBE) and near-death experiences. Kevin Nelson, professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky, is convinced the narratives of near-death experiences fit securely within the framework of conventional neuroscience. [12]
However, a growing number of scientists would disagree with that conclusion. They believe consciousness extends beyond death, driven by the belief that the brain is incapable of producing “highly vivid and lucid conscious experiences” perimortis, that is, around the time of death.
These scholars have investigated OBEs and other aspects of NDEs as possible indicators that consciousness may exist independently of the body and continue after death. Most of us are taught that the mind is a product of the brain. That all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and memories are created by the brain. However, that’s not the whole story.[13]
In 2014, Sam Parnia, a critical care and resuscitation expert at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, conducted the world’s largest study on human consciousness around the time of death. [14] Dr. Parnia’s findings suggest the conscious mind may continue to function for a period after the heart stops and the brain ceases to work.
Research on near-death experiences is challenging the belief that consciousness simply fades when the body dies. The phenomena of NDEs seems to defy simple, materialistic explanations such as lack of oxygen or drugs given to the patient. On the contrary, there is growing evidence suggesting that consciousness is not entirely dependent on brain function.
Enhanced or nonlocal consciousness can sometimes be experienced independently of the physical body. Scientific research on near-death experiences supports the idea consciousness is not confined to the brain but instead operates beyond it, with the brain acting as a facilitator rather than the source of consciousness. [15]
These findings have profound implications for our understanding of life and death, pointing to the possibility consciousness persists beyond physical death. In this view, death marks the end of physical existence, but consciousness continues to exist in another realm, allowing us to remain conscious beings even without a physical body. [15]
Regardless of whether their origins are biological, psychological or metaphysical, near-death experiences are undeniably part of the human experience. They have the power to affect beliefs about life after death and ultimately, the belief that death may not be the end. Death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another.
References
1. Heim, A. (1891). Notizen uber den Tod durch Absturtz. Jahrbuch des schweizer. Alpenclub 27, 327–337.
2. Moody, Raymond (1975). Life After Life. Mockingbird Books.
3. Ring, K. (1984). Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience. New York, NY: William Morrow.
4. Charland-Verville, V., Jourdan, J. P., Quertemont, E., … & Laureys, S. (2014). Near-death experiences in non-life-threatening events and coma of different etiologies. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 203.
5. Kandel ER. A new intellectual framework for psychiatry. Am J Psychiatry. 1998; 155:457–469. doi: 10.1176/ajp.155.4.457.
6. Ammermann, H., Kassubek, J., Schmidt, J., … & Grodd, W. (2007). MRI brain lesion patterns in patients in anoxia-induced vegetative state. Journal of the neurological sciences, 260(1-2), 65-70.
7. Woerlee, G.M. (2003). Mortal Minds. A biology of the soul and the dying experience. De Tijdstroom, Utrecht, the Netherlands
8. Siegel, R. K. (1981). Accounting for “afterlife” experiences. Psychology Today.
9. Sagan, C. (1979). Broca’s brain-Reflections on the romance of science. New York: Random House.
10. Greyson, Bruce (2021). After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond. St. Martin’s Essentials, New York, NY.
11. Lopez U., Forster A., Annoni J. M., Habre W., Iselin-Chaves I. A. (2006). Neardeath experience in a boy undergoing uneventful elective surgery under general anesthesia. Paediatr. Anaesth. 16, 85–88 10.
12. Nelson, K. (2015). Near-death experiences: Neuroscience perspectives on neardeath experiences. Missouri Medicine, 112(2), 92.
13. Verny, Thomas R (2021). The Embodied Mind, Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness, and Our Bodies, Pegasus, NY,
14. Parnia, S., Spearpoint, K., . . . & Wood, M et al., (2014). AWARE—Awareness during Resuscitation—A prospective study. Resuscitation, 85(12), 1799-1805.
15. van Lommel, P. (2021). The continuity of consciousness: A concept based on scientific research on near-death experiences during cardiac arrest. Bigelow Institute.
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