Rene’s van aquaplaned out of control, smashing her skull on an industrial power pole: ‘I was moving headfirst through a dark maelstrom of what looked like black boiling clouds. I felt that I was being beckoned to the sides; that frightened me. Ahead was a tiny dot of bright light that steadily grew and brightened as I drew nearer. I became aware that I must be dead... I rushed greedily forward towards this light.
I arrived with an explosion of glorious light into a room with insubstantial walls. I was standing before a man in his thirties, about six feet tall, with reddish brown shoulder length hair and an incredibly neat short beard and moustache. He wore a simple white robe. Light seemed to emanate from him. I felt he had great age and wisdom. He welcomed me with great love, tranquillity, peace (indescribable), no words. I felt as if I could sit at his feet forever, and be content. This struck me as a strange thing to feel. The fabric of his robe fascinated me. I tried to figure out how light could be woven!’[1]
Nathan was taken to theatre at seven months to correct intussusception. He almost died during the procedure.
‘When he was two, he started drawing a lot. He was drawing extremely well for a toddler, and kept drawing a picture of a person standing in a yellow beam of light with a rainbow on top. He kept drawing the same picture over and over. I asked him who it was and why he kept drawing the same thing. He said he was drawing himself so he could remember the time he went up in the sky. I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Later he told me:
'Remember when I was a baby and I hurt so bad? I went up in the yellow light and through a rainbow and I didn’t hurt any more. There were people there that told me I had to go back because you and dad still needed me.'
I was floored! I questioned him about it a few days later and he told me the same thing. I realised that he wasn’t making it up, and that he must have had a 'near-death experience'.’
What is a ‘near-death experience’ (NDE)?
‘Near death experiences’ were popularised in 1973 by Dr Raymond Moody, who was impressed by the striking similarity between stories of people who had survived a brush with death. Were these glimpses of heaven? His book Life after Life provoked much public debate, countless books and films such as Flatliners. Today there is even the Journal of Near Death Studies in (where else?) the USA.
In the UK, Dr Peter Fenwick, consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, presides over the International Association for Near-Death Studies. He has collected a database of over 300 accounts, largely in response to a QED documentary in 1987.
He found many common features that characterise an NDE:
- a feeling of overwhelming peace, joy and absence of pain
- the person often describes leaving his or her body, floating out of it and coming to rest at a vantage point, frequently near the ceiling
- the person may enter darkness, usually a dark tunnel. They seem to pass effortlessly and rapidly along it towards a pinpoint of light
- a brilliant light draws the person toward it
- meeting a being of light, which is an indescribable experience, characterised by warmth and overpowering love
- sometimes there is a life review, even a weighing up of past actions
- relatives or significant others, usually dead, may make an appearance
- a point of no return, a barrier which cannot be passed
- despite wanting to stay, they realise they cannot cross the barrier but have to return, often to complete unfinished business, or because their family needs them
How common are NDEs?
NDEs are alarmingly common. Retrospective studies, where patients who had almost died were questioned, suggest that 10-33% had a NDE. [2], [3], [4] A recent study of patients on a coronary care unit found that 6% (4/63) of cardiac arrest survivors had a classical NDE, and 3% more described some of the above features.[5] Unfortunately, none were able to identify objects placed above eye level to authenticate a literal out of body experience!
Are NDEs derived from upbringing or culture?
The fact that young children have NDEs is intriguing. They are unlikely to have heard of the phenomenon, and children don’t commonly contemplate death - rather they think they will live forever. Many accounts come from children aged less than seven, at a stage where abstract thinking is underdeveloped. Without preconceived notions of the afterlife these are unlikely to be a product of wish-fulfilment.
Children are more likely to put a religious interpretation on their experience, a more concrete Heaven, peopled by angels, Jesus figures and golden gates, whereas for adults a Jesus figure generally appears when faith isalready present. Are children more spiritually receptive, or just more impressionable?
‘I saw the doctor put the sheet over my body as I too was rising over my own body. I clearly saw angels around the window, then I sort of drifted into my body...You don’t talk about these things as folks will think you are some kind of nut. Only my close family knows about this.’[6] J Cassidy recalled a bout of pneumonia as a five year old some 50 years previously.
What about NDEs in other cultures? An Indian survey suggested that Indians did have visions similar to the Western type, including a life review and judgement, but were more likely to meet a religious being. However, the apparent reason for return from the brink of death was, in the majority of cases, neither a mission to complete nor obligations to loved ones. Instead an administrative error, or case of mistaken identity, was given as the reason for the premature appointment with Death! [7] Surely this demonstrates the potential for cultural bias, a subjective interpretation of what must be an extraordinary experience.
For example, what do we make of Rene’s vision of a Christ-like figure at whose feet she marvelled? Did Jesus really have reddish brown hair and an imposing six foot stature (and does he still), although a pure blooded ethnic Jew? Or is this a Euro-centric image, derived from romanticised Victorian art?
Aetiology: is there an organic explanation?
Are they drug induced?
Drugs given during anaesthesia or as part of a resuscitation procedure could potentially disorder brain function to produce elements of the NDE, but in Dr Fenwick’s sample only 14% were given drugs at the time of their experience.
Are they mediated by endorphins?
The body’s own pain-killing chemicals could induce a sense of euphoria, but only a fraction of people who undergo extreme stress, such as athletes, experience an NDE. Following grand mal seizures there is a surge of endorphins, but the result is anything but euphoria. Coherent visions are not reported.
Are they a result of cerebral hypoxia?
The most common organic explanation is quite elegant. The visual system is organised so that there are many more cells devoted to the centre than to the periphery of visual fields. Hypoxia might cause random firing of neurones throughout the system. This might appear as a dot of light in the centre of vision, which most cells mediate, and spread in a wave of hypoxia to the peripheries. Subjectively this would look like movement down a tunnel of light.
However, any medical student who has studied respiratory physiology will remember the following experiment. A brave subject rebreathes air from a spirometer, with diminishing levels of oxygen. Much to the amusement of the class, he becomes increasingly confused, his speech slurs and he slides into unconsciousness. But no medical guinea pig has reported experiences such as those quoted above. Nor do fighter pilots who black out in training.
Another anomaly relates to memory. Every casualty officer is taught that the more significant the brain injury, the greater the amnesia. The temporal lobe is acutely sensitive to hypoxia, so even if these sensations occurred, how could they be laid down in memory? Is the hypoxic brain capable of synthesising a complex internal world, and recalling it vividly later - a series of events that would require the interaction between many areas of cerebral cortex?
‘It is the clarity of the NDE, a self-perspective seldom afforded the normal conscious mind which appears to confound the definition of the dying brain’ says Fenwick.[8] He points to the detailed panoramic life-review, sometimes played back in its entirety. People not only receive flashbacks of thought and action, but also a realisation of how these have affected others around them. He believes that these experiences cannot be explained in terms of neurophysiology as currently understood. But he concedes that these neural events could occur when consciousness returns, and the recall projected back to the period of unconsciousness.
Are they hallucinations?
NDEs are visions, which the subjects believe to be real. But whether they have a basis in external reality is a moot point. Ordinarily, brains that are traumatised enough to produce unconsciousness do not produce coherent experiences, and hallucinations are renowned for their subjective nature, not shared by others. However, despite some similarities, NDEs are quite varied, and many are heavily culturally laden, as we have seen. Potentially they are hallucinations, although this label merely describes the experience as a product of disordered brain activity, and we are left with the anomalies above.
Are they a supernatural phenomenon?
Many accounts do not relate to life-threatening circumstances at all. Apparently some people can even have these visions at will, by means of meditation. Again, this questions whether all these experiences can be simply put down to physiology.
It is tempting to ascribe anything we cannot explain scientifically to the supernatural. There is no watertight neurological explanation of NDEs yet, but then history books are littered with examples of mysteries that are later understood in scientific terms. Faith in a ‘god of the gaps’ has often been taken hostage to scientific progress. For instance, the motions of the planets, and the ‘rising’ of the sun had been seen as evidence of God’s intervention in theuniverse, before gravity was described. In contrast to the popular view of a god who occasionally stoops down from a cloud to interrupt normal life, the Bible talks of a God who is intimately involved with every part of creation (Heb 1:3; Acts 17:27,28), sustaining and upholding it. And the examples in the Bible where the means of God’s involvement are revealed (Mt 17:27; Ex 14:21-22) are no less miraculous, nor more ‘natural’ for it.
So whatever the mechanism, NDEs could be an example of supernatural revelation, and they are certainly interpreted that way by many recipients.
Conclusions: what do NDEs tell us about the afterlife?
There are three common views of what happens after death, and they are mutually exclusive:
- non-existence (materialist)
- re-incarnation or union with the divine force (pantheist)
- resurrection and judgement leading to heaven or hell (theist)
If we take NDE accounts at face value, they do appear to validate continuity after physical death, an ecstasy that awaits us and our loved ones, a divine presence who often bears striking similarity to biblical descriptions of Christ, even some form of judgement. Yet in contrast to the well-publicised accounts of blissful paradise, a significant number had the opposite experience:
‘I found myself in a place surrounded by mist. I felt I was in hell. There was a big pit with vapour coming out and there were arms coming out trying to grab mine... I was terrified that these hands were going to claw hold of me and pull me into the pit with them.’[11] Another woman refused to elaborate, saying, ‘I had a hell-type experience 20 years ago, and it has haunted me ever since’.
Of those who offer their accounts, 1-12% report hellish encounters, and given the traumatic nature of these, and the stigma attached, this is likely to be an underestimate. The survivors are reluctant to talk about them.[11]
False reassurance?
Despite these accounts, most commentators are comforted by the stories they select. In Fenwick’s book, his concluding quote from a survivor conveys his optimism:
‘One thing is for sure, and that is that death has no fears for me’.
Where does this leave us? How do we weigh up contradictory visions of the afterlife and competing truth claims? One thing we know with absolute certainty: they cannot all be right!
What do we make of accounts that contradict the biblical revelation? For instance, Rene quoted above had a life review, in which the ‘divine’ figure replayed her life to her. She felt burdened by guilt, feeling the hurt she had caused. But although ‘unworthy’, she felt ‘the balance was in my favour, and I received great love’. She then received a commission: ‘it is time to live according to your beliefs, whatever they may be, for the end times are upon us!’[1]
Her vision offers a tantalising glimpse into the heavenly realm. But was it a reliable depiction of God? The ‘Jesus’ figure clearly contradicts the teaching of the historical person Jesus of Nazareth. He warned that our knowledge of and obedience to him in this life will determine who enters heaven (Mt 7:21-23). Ultimately we will all bow before one reality, whatever we choose to believe before death (Phil 2:10).
Critique: are visions and revelations near truth experiences?
Whilst the God of the Bible does speak through dreams, visions and visitations (Mt 2:12; Acts 8:26, 10:9-23, 16:9,10, 18:9-11; Rev 1:1), we’re reminded of the dangers of relying on this form of revelation. Spirits must be tested:
‘Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.’ (1 Jn 4:2b,3)
This means that any message must be consistent with Jesus’ teaching ‘in the flesh’. His teaching is most reliably recorded in the historical document of the Bible. Even if an angel preaches us a different message (for instance ‘live according to your beliefs, whatever they may be’!) we are not to believe it (Gal 1:8; 1 Cor 14:37-38).
The alternative origins of revelation are someone’s imagination (Ezk 13:2), or a more sinister power (1 Ki 22:19-23). We’re warned that the devil himself can masquerade as an ‘angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14), offering enough truth to attract us, but dangerously distorted (1 Jn 4:1-3). False prophets typically tell us lies ‘our itching ears want to hear’(2 Tim 4:3). However comforting, false reassurance is like dressing a serious wound with a plaster - it only serves to compound our spiritual state (Je 6:14).
Sadly, not even our sincerity necessarily protects us from deception. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things’(Je 17:9). Many people suppose that only those with a weak faith are ever sceptical. But Jesus warns us not to be naive about our gullibility or the danger of false teaching, and commands us to be ‘shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves’ (Mt 10:16).
So who are we to believe on the subject of life after death?
Essential reading: Jesus, the man who returned from a total death experience
In contrast to any of the witnesses considered in this article, Jesus really died - definitely and irrefutably. He fully crossed the threshold of death. The rest were all stopped short at some point, only to wonder at what really lay beyond ‘the final frontier’. They are necessarily ignorant of what will really happen when we die.
Two thousand years ago in Palestine Jesus was executed by the Romans, the most ruthless military outfit known to the world. After hanging exhausted on the cross for three hours, he finally stopped breathing. The soldiers, knowing he had already died, didn’t bother breaking his legs. Instead, they demonstrated that blood had ceased to circulate by piercing his thorax with a spear. Blood and plasma had separated (Jn 19:34). Any doctor today would be obliged to sign a death certificate on such a patient.
However, after three days in a sealed tomb, Jesus appeared to his disciples, recognisable but different. At first they thought he was a ghost, a disembodied spirit. Jesus assured them:
‘Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’ (Lk 24:39b)
He had passed through death’s door and returned to tell the tale. Only he has the authority to tell us what lies beyond, because only he, the God-man Jesus, has been there:
‘No-one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven - the Son of Man.’ (Jn 3:13)
We can trust his account of the way things are. His words, recorded in the Bible, have greater authority than any man’s, and must be the measure of all others.
