Near-death experiences: Heaven can wait

[okarol]

Near-death experiences: Heaven can wait

    April 10 2009 at 03:58PM

By Roger Dobson

Tunnels, bright lights, visions of the deceased. Do near-death experiences really offer a glimpse of the afterlife? or is there a more rational explanation? Roger Dobson reports.

When doctors returned to check on the patient who had almost died and been in a deep coma before being resuscitated, he thanked them for all the work they had done. He had, he told the surprised team of medics, been very impressed and had watched everything they had done. He had heard all that had been said, too, and, at one point, had been concerned when resuscitation was about to be abandoned. He then went on to describe in detail the room where he had been treated, although he had never been conscious in there.

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That near-death experience is one of a number recorded by Dutch doctors and one of thousands of similar cases that have now been documented in a major worldwide study.

'But there's no consensus on what lies behind near-death experiences'
New research shows that many critically ill kidney dialysis patients have similar experiences, and that almost one in 10 heart-arrest survivors also report near-death experiences whose features include out of body sensations, bright lights, dark tunnels, and images of life events and spiritual entities.

But there's no consensus on what lies behind near-death experiences, even though they are being increasingly reported. Are they, as some people are convinced, signs of the soul leaving the body? Or are they, as others suggest, the last, dreamlike act put on by a dying brain?

Near-death experiences are surprisingly common. In the latest study, researchers quizzed 710 kidney dialysis patients and found that, out of 70 patients who had suffered a life-threatening event, 45 had gone though a near-death experience. And research by Virginia University shows that 10 per cent of heart-arrest patients, and 1 per cent of other cardiac patients, had reported having a near-death experience.

Near-death experiences occur in both sexes, in every culture, and at all ages. Researchers at the University Hospital of Geneva recently reported what they describe as the first case in a child of 12 who had undergone elective, uncomplicated surgery that had run into difficulties. But, in spite of considerable differences in ages, cultures and diseases, many features of near-death experiences are remarkably similar.

The spiritual theorists have it that this is the immediate prelude to death itself, and that it establishes that there is life after death. These theories take what the individual sees, hears and feels as being a report of exactly what happened. One suggestion is that, at the time of death, the body and soul separate and near-death experiences are a glimpse of the first part of that process.

A range of psychological theories have been put forward to explain the phenomenon. One suggests that it is a defence mechanism in the face of impending death. Another floats the idea that the working of the brain is somehow altered by changes in chemicals that occur shortly before death. Other explanations include false memories, a reaction to acute stress, and anoxia, or lack of oxygen, resulting in sensory disturbances.

A newer theory suggests the arousal system is implicated, and that the near-death experience is triggered by the crisis. The idea is that rapid eye movement (or REM sleep, where most dreaming occurs, and where the sleeper is paralysed, with only the heart, diaphragm, eye muscles and the smooth muscles active) is involved. At the root of the theory is the notion that some people are more prone to a condition called REM intrusion, where sleep paralysis occurs when they are awake. It is found in people with narcolepsy, or excessive sleepiness, and it can be accompanied by hallucinations or delusional experiences that are unusually vivid and often frightening.

Research led by Dr Kevin Nelson, clinical neurophysiologist and Professor of Neurology at the University of Kentucky shows that, out of 55 people who have had near-death experiences, 60 per cent had at least one prior occasion where REM sleep state intruded into wakefulness, compared to only 24 per cent in a control group. "Instead of passing directly between the REM state and wakefulness, the brain switch in those with a near-death experience is more likely to blend the REM state and wakefulness into one another," he says.

Brain regions involved in the REM state are part of the arousal system that regulates different states of consciousness, and are also part of the brain's fight-or-flight survival instinct. The theory, which is gaining support, is that people who have experienced a previous REM-intrusion are more likely to have a near-death experience under circumstances of peril. It has also been shown that stimulating the heart and lung nerve, as occurs during resuscitation, can trigger REM-intrusion.

The theory also has explanations for the common characteristics of near-death experience. The impression of being dead, for example, could be a reaction to the paralysis of REM, while the tunnel of light may be linked to changes in blood flow in the retina and visual activation by the REM system.

The paranormal and spiritual images may result from the fact that the limbic system, which is older than other parts of the brain and which is involved in behaviour, emotion and long-term memory, is strongly active during REM sleep. Out of body experiences - often reported by people under extreme stress - have also been linked to the arousal system.

While it offers explanations for many features of near-death experience, the researchers behind the arousal theory say that it is still work in progress. The problem for them and other researchers looking for more down-to-earth explanations is that they have to find a rationale for their theories, unlike the spiritual theorists who accept everything as reported as evidence of paranormal activity.

Little fieldwork has been carried out to prove or disprove the spiritual theory as a whole, although out-of-body experiences have been examined. These experiences often involve the individual looking down from ceiling height at themselves on the operating table, or in a bed. To test whether these are real, some experimenters have placed labels and objects on the top of equipment that could only been seen from the ceiling. So far, no one has been able to spot them.

Floating away: An out-of-body experience

Thirty-five-year-old Pam Reynolds was being operated on for a potentially fatal rupture when she had a near-death experience. The surgical technique involved stopping her heartbeat and breathing, flattening brainwaves, and draining the blood from her head to remove the aneurysm.

"When she was once again able to speak, she reported that she awoke during the early stages of the operation to the sound of the small pneumatic saw that was being used to open her skull," says Dr Christopher French of Goldsmiths, University of London, who recounts the case in a report.

"She then felt as if she was being pulled out through the top of her head and, during the subsequent out-of-body experience, she was able to watch the proceedings from above the neurosurgeon's shoulder. Her account accords very well with those of the medical staff present at the time, including her description of the pneumatic saw and the fact that the cardiac surgeon expressed surprise that the blood vessels in her right groin were too small to handle the large flow of blood needed to feed the cardiopulmonary bypass machine.

"She reported that, after her heart was stopped and the blood drained from her body, she passed through a black vortex and into a realm of light where she met with deceased relatives. These relatives looked after her, provided her with nourishment, and eventually helped her to return to her physical body. She was able to report the music that was being played in the operating theatre at the point of her return."

Although the case is often presented as one that defies all conventional explanations, there are non-spiritual explanations. It is not uncommon, for example, for patients to awaken during operations and be able to recount what was going on, and a low level of brain activity is difficult to detect in an operating theatre.

Frequency of features experienced by people who have a near-death experience

Preternaturally vivid sensations 86,3 percent

Tunnel experience 5,9 percent

Feeling of joy 58,8 percent

Awareness of being dead 3,9 percent

Sense of sudden understanding 35,3 percent

Life review 19,6 percent

Sense of a mystical entity 33,3 percent

Feeling of peace 74,5 percent

Altered sense of time 41,2 percent

Out-of-body experience 51 percent

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=79&art_id=iol123917731293N633

[glitter]

I am reading a book called The Art of Dying by Fenwick. It deals with just this subject from a caregivers standpoint, as far as the stories patients tell them and things they also observe. After losing my husband recently, these stories give me hope that there may be more after life. I am also reading Hello from Heaven, which concerns spontaneous after death communication (meaning no mediums). I am very much a skeptic- but we promised each other we would try if its possible.
  Now, I wrote the author of Hello from Heaven, his son replied. (Bill Guggenheim) I wanted to know why more people didnt kill themselves if the afterlife is so wonderful. I mean once you have seen that its painfree and peaceful etc. Why don't more people kill themselves? If I could die and be with my husband again immediatly- why not? His answer was for me to post on their message boards, because a lot of people had different answers to that question (mostly religious answers).
   Just so everyone knows I am not suicidal at ALL, I am just curious as to people train of thoughts on this subject.
To repeat- I am not suicidal- he also advised me to make that point clear in any conversation.

In the Art of Dying there are many accounts from people who work in healthcare and the accounts they give have been very interesting.

[okarol]

I remember wondering that same thing when I was in Sunday school, and I believe my grandmother said, "if you commit suicide you might not go to heaven where your loved ones are."

[G-Ma]

I'm curious to know how many of us have had the different experiences?  Mine was after I died in the recovery room after surgery in 2005.  I woke up after a day the kids told me but for 3 days I didn't know who anyone was and was at the bottom end of a large glass tunnel about 12 inches in diameter and several feet long and everyone who talked to me wether in person or on the phone, their face would be at the other end of the tunnel...they were so stressed because I didn't know them or who I was..it was like all memory was erased.  Saul called from ND and I had no clue who he was no matter what anyone said but his face was at the top of the tunnel. By the way, there never had been any kind of a tunnel in the room. They would bring items of mine but no clue...the funniest part was Halloween..all the nurses and techs were in custom.  The boys were in my room and I started squirming but didn't know what to ask for so I just kept pointing at my groin and they figured out the bathroom and went to get my nurse...well that week my nurse had been a gorgeos dark skinned man and I had not seen him that shift yet so all of a sudden this good looking Texas Ranger walked in and said I'm here to take you to the bathroom and I was bound and determined not to let a visitor take me.  Still laugh about that.  Every day Dr would come in and ask me to spell world backwards and I didn't know what it was much less how to spell it, didn't know who president was...I think I guessed Eisenhower, nothing.  At 11 am on the forth day the boys walked in, the tunnel moved away from me and I reached up to hug them, they asked me who they were and I said and we talked about the kids and called Saul...the Dr came in around noon and asked if I was ready to try to spell world backwards and I whipped it out.  She started dancing around the room and said I might have times when words don't fit and still do..the next day Ron was able to take me home and he was getting ready to leave and putting on his boots and I pointed out that he needed to change his crayons as they were broken.  He said welcome back mom and I have new laces at home.  Several other experiences at different times but this was about the most recent.

[kitkatz]

The night I was in the hospital with kidney failure, heart congestion and double pneumonia and they had done one treatment of dialysis, I had the opportunity to talk to an angel.  We talked about my life and everything, then I was given a choice of which life I wanted, or did I want to go onward.  I still do not know why I came back almost ten and a half years ago, but here I am still.

[G-Ma]

you were not finished with something kit...that's what I firmly believe. 
and yes ok my grandmother drilled that one into our heads.

[okarol]

glitter - that avatar photo is so beautiful!   

[glitter]

That was at our wedding 10 years ago- we have been together 15 years though- he always counted the shackin' up years as wedded. and the minute our anniversary day was over he would start calling it the 'working on the 'next' year'- so our 15th anniversary is next month- but then we would be working on 16 years lol- I miss him. That red dot on my dress was a sparkly heart.

[glitter]

I would like to hear more near death experiences if anyone here has a story to tell, or any stories from the few nurses who post about any experiences with death that were uplifting?

[paul.karen]

Great article Okarol.

Why cant the scientific world just let it be what it is.  A NEAR death experience.  No mind games, no one playing pretend.  I dont get it it is what it is unexplainable.  if it wasnt we wouldn't be talking about it.


Gma-Glitter $ kitkatz those are some amazing stories.  And im glad the docs are baffled about this stuff.  30 years ago you may have well been thrown into the asylums as a crazy person.
I have almost died several times.  But no near death adventures to share.  Just my own stupidity growing up.

[G-Ma]

Just be glad you didn't die P/K...I think we all did the stupidity thing.     

[monrein]

I was very ill once in Burma and ended up in a hospital in Thailand with severe dysentery and what they eventually said was a "brain fever".  I hardly knew who I was and keep going in and out of reality although I was never actually unconscious.  On one occasion I felt completely detached from my body and as if I were high up above looking down at the doctor and nurses talking to me and about me.  The body that I recognized as myself was answering them but the me on the ceiling felt totally apart from the scene and more like an impartial observer.  I felt as if I was hanging outside my body for quite some time although I've no idea how much actual time was involved as I had no watch nor was there a clock in my room.  Eventually they all left and I wandered about, looking out the window etc and then eventually felt as though I drifted back down, back into my body and felt very aware of the difference in perspective, looking out from myself instead of observing myself as if I were another person, who I was very familiar with but who wasn't actually attached to the other "me" who was watching the scene.

I always put this experience down to the hallucinations that severe illness can cause and also some of the drugs that they were "treating" me with.  As I got better I became increasingly aware of feeling more and more integrated as myself again whereas before I was feeling that I could slip out of myself again although it only happened the one time.  I still try to observe my moods or feelings as if they were separate from me in order to understand what's going on from a more objective, less subjective point of view.  I often find that they correlate with pain or frustrated desires and I can then deal with them more easily.

I quite regularly have thoughts (as a kid I had then very often) that seem to arise out of some place deep in my brain, thoughts that I've never been conscious of before and they challenge me to think about odd things.  As I child (starting at about 6) I often wondered how we could be sure that we were in fact real and not in some kind of parallel universe to this one, a universe that we could slip in and out of at will.  Grownups thought I was a bit strange and used to try to talk me into religion but none of that ever made any sense to me and they usually ended up saying I should stop asking questions and just believe in God.  I would ask if they believed in fairies but they didn't and I could never really understand what the difference was.
Of all the so called religions I've looked into, the one that makes the most sense to me is Buddhism (not as it's practised in places like Sri Lanka but more the writings of Buddha) since it doesn't ask me to believe in anything "out there" and in fact one could very easily be a Christian or Muslim or whatever and still explore Buddhist principles.  I am very glad that religion is such a comfort to many people but somehow it just always leads me to more and more unanswered questions. 

What interests me perhaps the most is that I'm not at all scared of death even though I have no belief as such in an afterlife.  I'm not sure it doesn't exist and if it does, fine, but if it doesn't that also feels OK by me.  My Mum died a long time ago and yet she lives inside of me still and I pass along to my nieces and nephew my experience of her and she feels very real to them although they've never met her.  As such, she certainly has a life after death.  I do feel at peace with life and also feel that if this is all there is then I'm content to have had what I've had in the way of relationships and experiences and that the reason for striving to be a really decent person has to do with my present reality, not any future reward.   I do love traveling and if there are other dimensions to be explored, I hope I can make the most of that reality too should the opportunity ever come my way.

[Sunny]

I've never had a near death experience. It is very intriguing to read about them.
Dealing with kidney disease for the last 8 years has deepened my feelings that there probably is an afterlife. Facing the possibility of an early death has served to make me become more at ease with issues of death. I do not fear death knowing there is probably an afterlife. What I do fear is pain and suffering. My husband does not believe in the afterlife. This does cause some strife between us at times. I just joke with him that he will be fully surprised to see me after he thinks he's all done with me in this life.

[BigSky]

Some in science try to play it off as some theory about various processes of the brain.



One interesting thing I find in such stories is people often tell of meeting their dead friend, relatives, relatives they never met etc etc.  Not once have I heard a story where these people were meeting people that are still  alive.  Just from that it would seem to me to exclude some abstract theory some in science try to portray it as.

[Rerun]

I know when my sister died and we came home from the hospital, I walked into my parents home and I smelled her.  She had not been in that house for months.  I smelled her.  I went outside and it started hailing big stones and I opened my hand and watched them drop onto my hand.  This was July!  I knew she was okay.

                                       

[LightLizard]

i've had two dramatic 'NDE's' through my life. one about 35 years ago. i was young and healthy and looking for work in northern ontario. i was with a pal and we were in the outer office of a mining company, waiting for the foreman to interview us. we started horsing around, wrestling and pushing each other around like a couple of school-boys.

my foot slipped on the concrete floor and i went down. on the way to the floor my head hit the corner of a metal waste container and i was knocked unconscious for a moment. my temple had been struck and was bleeding. i was on all fours, watching the blood pool on the floor. i looked up and i wasn't in the office anymore.

i was in a place of natural beauty, surrounded by rolling, grassy hills under a blue sky. all around me a crowd of people stood, looking at me and watching, as though waiting expectantly. i could actually hear their thoughts as if they were communicating with each other telepathically.
 the younger-appearing ones were closest to me, the older-looking were behind them. the younger ones were asking (mentally) 'is he ready? is he coming? should we help him?' over and over. the older ones were answering, (also mentally)
'wait, wait, it is up to him, be patient...' they all wore white robes and were bald, by the way. (??)

i looked up and was back in the office with my friend standing over me, a startled, shocked look on his face. he helped me up and took me to the medical office, where they bandaged my head for me.

at that time of my life i had no real spiritual connection. i was basically an agnostic and a martial arts enthusiast. the experience did move me to explore the spiritual path for some time, afterwards.

years later, when hospitalised for my condition, i was in a state of convulsing, one night. i couldn't stop vomitting, it seemed. i left my body and floated toward the ceiling. i could see 360 degrees, all around me. as i focused on the ceiling, which seemed inches from my face, a vast darkness opened up in front of my eyes. it was filled with bright lights of various colours and shifting, moving shapes of mist.

one of the misty shapes, gigantic in size, moved towards me. i could feel that it was actually a living being of some kind and somehow i managed to ask...'who are you? what should i call you?'
it was a woman's voice that answered, she said, 'i am artemis. i have always been with you. i will always be with you. have no fear, you are safe....'

this happened about three years ago and since then i have come to realise that these kinds of experiences are results of the chemical interactions in the brain during trauma causing hallucinations to comfort oneself during the dying process, or what we perceive of as our dying process. the mind is very, very powerful and the subconscious mind contains many ideas and images that we have no conscious knowledge of  except through dreams and trauma. (and some psychedelics)..

i had never studied greek mythology in my life. but here was artemis, ready to guide me to the afterlife. something i found she was attributed with when i went online and researched the name, after my experience.

generally, those who have a near death experience will see images that relate to what they have believed in for most of their lives. if they do not have a strong faith in a definite tradition, their mind will draw from subconscious memories to comfort them.

interestingly, afterwards, for about two weeks, i could barely speak. i would open my mouth to talk, knowing what i wanted to say, but i would just stutter and sputter. i could actually see music, too. it looked like beautiful, dancing bubbles of multi-colored lights. it was amazing. i couldn't play my drum or my guitar though. it was as if my brain had forgotten how to separate right and left.
it lasted for about two weeks and finally abated. a brain-scan showed nothing abnormal.

the mind is an amazing thing.