Millions of people around the world have reported life-changing Near Death Experiences (NDEs). They occur in almost every culture around the world, and show repeated elements that transcend cultural differences.
The first written exploration of NDEs comes from late 19th century France, in a collection of accounts put together by Swiss geologist Albert Heim. But Socrates had such an experience, according to Plato, and similar accounts are found in a host of ancient records, from Pharaonic Egypt to Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
The most well-known NDEs tend to involve an out of body experience, followed by a tunnel of light, down which the dying person travels, before undergoing a review and assessment of the life just ended. Many people report seeing figures that turn out to be deceased friends and relatives, waiting to help them cross to the other side.
Or not quite cross to the other side, as is necessarily the case with all NDEs. Or they would just be DEs.
The Invincibility of Youth
In the summer of 2013, I was routinely travelling from my home in Cambridge to the outskirts of London, refurbishing my sister-in-law’s house and readying it for sale.
I felt pretty good. My fitness levels were constantly improving, not least because I did additional gardening work during the week and studied martial arts in the evenings.
With confidence in my abilities growing, I took on a host of new challenges: climbing onto the roof, re-fixing the ridge tiles… angle-grinding away the old iron gutter brackets and fitting new ones… building an external staircase to the second floor of a coachhouse… repointing an entire flint and lime mortar cottage, until trigger-finger stopped my hands from opening.
I felt strong and capable. Almost indestructible.
Indeed, I was quite proud of the fact you could hear my heart beating, quite distinctly, without needing to press an ear to my chest. I mocked puny humans with their silent pumps. After all, it’s common knowledge that loud things are inherently more powerful than quiet things. Just as heavy things are automatically better quality than light ones.
Occasionally I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears, especially when carrying bags of cement or moving paving slabs. But that was just another indication of my burgeoning virility.
And yes, I did have the occasional nosebleed that wouldn’t stop. But so did my brother, when he was young. It was nothing more than a slightly annoying family trait.
I was about to discover that my understanding of my own health could not have been further from the truth.
Death Extends and Icy Finger
It’s a warm Sunday evening and I’ve just got back from London. I’ve already eaten (a lovely roast dinner, cooked by by partner) and the sun is still shining when I decide that need bed more than wine. I climb the stairs, slip between the light cotton sheets… and fall asleep almost instantly.
Darkness.
Not just a lack of light, but a degree of blackness so profound it makes me a little nervous.
Where is this?
I look down. It feels like I’m standing on something, but I see nothing.
This place is entirely devoid of form, and my own form feels ephemeral. It’s not only the darkness, veiling my surroundings; I know intuitively that there is literally no thing out there.
Weird, I think to myself. I’m not scared, but I am confused.
Small green lights start to appear, like stars in the clearest night sky. These tiny dots quickly become fully-formed spheres, each containing myriad smaller lights, like glass Christmas baubles stuffed with thousands of LEDs.
I lean forward and peer into the nearest sphere. To my astonishment, the tiny flashes within are formed into a distinct architectural shape: a grand, civic building of some kind… no, a cathedral.
Raising my head, I take a step back and look around, only to discover that this individual sphere is now part of a huge display that forms the very same shape, but on much grander scale, fully encompassing my being.
I am standing inside a cathedral of stars.
I glance at another sphere, much further in the distance (there is now a vague sense of ‘here’ and ‘there’, even though the stars float in nothingness). My vision zooms in, as if I have Steve Austin’s bionic eye, and I peer beneath its transparent surface. Sure enough, this sphere also contains an identical version of the entire starry-structure, within its tiny volume.
Everything is reflected in everything else. No, that’s not quite right: everything is everything else.
I realise that I have known this this all along. It was there from the moment I was born. The understanding that I am part of this oneness prompts a beautifully warm and fuzzy feeling to flood my being.
‘You’re right, everything is connected,’ says a voice.
A voice I don’t recognise. It’s neither male nor female, familiar or foreign, loud or quiet. It just is.
Suddenly, I feel an unusual contraction and heaviness in my chest, accompanied by a sense of apprehension - a pregnant pause, in the space of which I come to know that I am in the process of dying.
‘Will you take your last heartbeat?’ Asks the voice, kindly.
Intuitively, I know that if I say yes, I will remain here and never go back to the other place. I blink, once, and reach an instant decision: ‘I must return, for my daughter,’ I say, out loud.
And I wake up.
I’m covered in sweat.
Whatever just happened, I know with absolute certainty that it was not a dream.
‘Go to the doctor,’ says my partner, who is, by know, accustomed to hearing some pretty wild stories. And is beginning to take them seriously.
P-P-P-Pump it Up
No sooner has the air released from the cuff on my arm than the nurse pumps it up again.
She taps the dial with her knuckles. ‘Do you feel OK at the moment?’ A few more taps. ‘Just sit here… and try to relax… while I get a different machine.’ She stands up and moves to the door.
‘I am relaxed,’ I reply.
The new device is much more imposing. Big enough to necessitate its own stand and a set of wheels. But the upgrade in technology makes no difference.
‘Your pressure is 250 over 155,’ she says, barely believing her own words, ‘and your pulse 130. But you say you’ve been feeling OK?. She pushes the machine to one side and looks at me, earnestly.
I’m not sure how to respond.
‘You haven’t been suffering from nosebleeds, or anything like that?’ She asks, with a frown.
‘Well yes, I do have a problem with nosebleeds,’ I admit.
‘Can you hear your heart?’ She adds. ‘Does it pulse in your ears when you’re exercising, for example?’
‘Errr… yes. It does. Quite loudly, to be honest.’ I start to fidget, my anxiety levels rising.
‘What do you do for work?’
‘Landscaping, building, physical stuff. I’ve just finished our roof.’
She looks at me in horror. ‘Up a ladder? Oh dear God. Please tell me you don’t use power tools.’
‘I did have a go with an angle-grinder, last week, to sort out the guttering…’
I trail off into silence. I can tell from her expression that she thinks it’s a miracle I’m still in one piece.
‘I only came today because I dreamt I almost died,’ I conclude, with a nervous half smile, thinking this will lighten the mood.
‘Did you,’ she says, not looking up from the prescription pad, across which her pen is skipping
‘Well,’ she concludes, ‘You dreamt right.’
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes (Carl Jung)
I spent the next few months in a whirl of medical tests. But under underneath it all I was far more focused on the NDE than the cause of my ill health.
Yes, OK, I probably had a heart virus. But where did I go? Who spoke to me? And what did it all mean?
I expected the people around me to be entranced by my account of this other-worldly experience. But to them it was little more than a bog-standard dream. And we all know how much people love to hear about your dreams: the only way to start eyes glazing over any faster is to show strangers pictures of your children
So I internalised the whole thing as much as possible.
It would be my secret. Unless people asked, I wouldn’t even share my biggest take-away from the whole experience: death might only a step away, but that step is nothing to worry about.
When the voice asked me if I wanted to take my last heartbeat, there was no sense of impending doom. I knew that saying yes, and staying, would be as effortlessly simple - not to mention painless - as saying no, and returning to the world of the living. It didn’t even feel like one decision carried more significance than the other. It was simply a case of life or death… you choose.
I chose life and had no regrets. But that didn’t stop me thinking about the alternative.
The Net Appears
By this time I had long been interested in all things ‘supernatural’ and already knew some basic stuff about NDEs.
I wanted to know more. Lots more.
This experience had brought me more comfort and given me a greater sense of purpose than almost anything else in my life, except my family. Yet most of the people I knew - and, it transpired, almost all of Western science - dismissed it out of hand.
According to mainstream studies (such as they were), NDEs were supposedly caused by nothing more than a lack of oxygen to the brain. Or perhaps a mass infusion of routine brain chemicals (including pain-killers), released in anticipation of the body shutting down. A dramatic closing act in the theatre of the creative mind, before the curtain came down, you might say. A final flushing of the pipes, before the cylinders seized… you get the idea.
I disagreed. Vehemently.
Perhaps I could find some objective, documented proof of the phenomenon, to convince the doubters. I returned to the subject, on and off, over many years. And found very little of relevance. Escher’s intricate wood carvings certainly had echoes of my experience, but lacked something important. Then luck intervened.
Listening to a podcast on Buddhism, I heard the presenter describe the qualities of Indra’s Net and his words stopped me dead in my tracks.
Indra is the king of the devas (akin to gods) in Hinduism, and the net hangs over his palace, which sits on Mount Meru, centre of the universe and axis of the world.
What does the net represent? Nothing less than ‘the interconnectedness or “perfect interfusion” (yuanrong) of all phenomena in the universe.’
In visual terms, the net is ‘considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels.’
I was dumbfounded. In my wildest expectations I had hoped to find some vague first-hand accounts of experiences similar to mine. But here was a fully-fledged religious practice in which the very ‘object’ I had encountered was described in glorious and poetic detail, with precisely the same physical and metaphysical attributes I had witnessed.
Yes, my Western upbringing had shaped the net into a more recognisable religious symbol, namely a cathedral, and my ‘jewels’ were more akin to glass spheres - but the core experience was identical.
It was a moment of pure and unanticipated revelation that still makes me shiver.
It Only Takes One Black Swan
Today I worry about many things, but death is not one of them.
Of course, I need to concede that my confidence in the serenity of the final journey could be misplaced. After all, NDEs are exactly that: the experiences of people who did not actually die. Inferring anything about unequivocal death is therefore inherently problematic.
Falling into an active volcano is not the same as almost falling into an active volcano.
However, it’s not just people teetering on the edge of extinction who report these events.
Users of the powerful psychedelic Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) often recount similar experiences, a fact that may be interpreted one of two ways: nay-sayers can point to this as further evidence of the purely chemical nature of NDEs, while proponents can argue DMT is a catalyst for real spiritual or out of body experiences that are strongly reminiscent of the death process.
One thing beyond question is the considerable number of scientists who have changed their opinions on the subject, and dropped their scepticism, after experiencing NDEs first-hand.
The potential for instant conversion is true of all liminal or paranormal events. You can deny the validity of UAP reports until you are blue in the face, but your opinion will change faster than you can say ‘E.T. phone home’ if a 50-foot saucer lands on your lawn.
All swans are white, until you see a black one.
Let Slip the Dogs of (Culture) War
It is to the detriment of science that NDEs are not taken seriously. There is absolutely no question that we do not know everything there is to know about the universe, but we are set firm on a course that only permits the uncovering of ‘truths’ that reinforce the dominant materialistic (more specifically, physicalistic) paradigm.
Physicalism asserts that reality is made of entirely of physical stuff, such as atoms and elements; and that mental stuff, such as consciousness, is nothing more than an accidental by-product of complicated arrangements of physical systems (such as brains).
If consciousness exists at all. Some physicalists go as far as arguing that it does not.
There is no experimental evidence to support this ideology: the more scientists try to pin-down matter and explain its qualities, the more tenuous and inexplicable it becomes. The paradoxes of quantum mechanics are symptomatic of this rather awkward and inconvenient truth.
Nevertheless, physicalism has been used to dismiss the non-material experiences of millions of people, over thousands of years, as nothing more than anecdote, perpetuated by the gullible and embraced by feeble-minded.
Remember Albert Heim, the geologist who started the modern investigation of NDEs?
There is no more telling indication of the dominant belief-system of WIkipedia’s editors than the fact Heim’s individual Wikipedia page makes no mention of NDEs, but does devote 174 words to his interest in Bernese Mountain Dogs.
Lovely thought they are, these dogs are unlikely to change our understanding of reality.
NDEs just might.
Sources:
'Near-Death Studies' Wikipedia
'Oldest medical description of a near death experience...' Resuscitation Journal No.85 (2014)
'Near-Death Experience' Wikipedia
* All images Wikipedia (commons), unless otherwise stated
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