In my own research I have come across numerous reports like this one, sent to me by a woman from Cyprus:Īn emergency gastrectomy was performed. It appeared that Moody, at least in outline, was right. In 1982, a Gallup poll found that about 1 in 7 adult Americans had been close to death and about 1 in 20 had had an NDE. One cardiologist had talked to more than 2,000 people over a period of nearly 20 years and claimed that more than half reported Moody-type experiences (Schoonmaker 1979). The matter was soon settled by further research. They assumed Moody was at least exaggerating, but he claimed that no one had noticed the experiences before because the patients were too frightened to talk about them. Nevertheless the experience deeply affects him, especially his views about life and death. Later he tries to tell others but they don’t understand, and he soon gives up. Even though he feels joy, love, and peace there, he returns to his body and life. At some point he gets to a barrier and knows that he has to go back. Soon he meets others and a “being of light” who shows him a playback of events from his life and helps him to evaluate it. He can see his own body from a distance and watch what is happening. Then comes a loud buzzing or ringing noise and a long, dark tunnel. In this idealized experience a person hears himself pronounced dead. He had talked with many people who had “come back from death,” and he put together an account of a typical NDE. These remained largely ignored until about 15 years ago, when Raymond Moody (1975), an American physician, published his best-selling Life After Life. Resuscitation from ever more serious heart failure has provided accounts of extraordinary experiences (although this is not the only cause of NDEs). Paradoxically it is also improved medicine that has led to an increase in quite a different kind of report- that of the near-death experience. Today most people die in the hospital and all too often alone. In those days people died at home with little or no medication and surrounded by their family and friends. With modern medical techniques, deathbed visions like these have become far less common. There were cases of music heard at the time of death and reports of attendants actually seeing the spirit leave the body. The dying apparently saw other worlds before they died and even saw and spoke to the dead. In 1926, a psychical researcher and Fellow of the Royal Society, Sir William Barrett (1926), published a little book on deathbed visions. In 1882, the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and serious research on the phenomena began but convincing evidence for survival is still lacking over one hundred years later (Blackmore 1988). Spiritualism began to flourish, and people flocked to mediums to get in contact with their dead friends and relatives “on the other side.” Spiritualists claimed, and indeed still claim, to have found proof of survival. Toward the end of the last century the physical sciences and the new theory of evolution were making great progress, but many people felt that science was forcing out the traditional ideas of the spirit and soul. Any satisfactory theory has to understand that too-and that leads us to questions about minds, selves, and the nature of consciousness. They seem completely real and can transform people’s lives. So which is right? Are near-death experiences (NDEs) the prelude to our life after death or the very last experience we have before oblivion? I shall argue that neither is quite right: NDEs provide no evidence for life after death, and we can best understand them by looking at neurochemistry, physiology, and psychology but they are much more interesting than any dream. By contrast, for many scientists these experiences are just hallucinations produced by the dying brain and of no more interest than an especially vivid dream. What is it like to die? Although most of us fear death to a greater or lesser extent, there are now more and more people who have “come back” from states close to death and have told stories of usually very pleasant and even joyful experiences at death’s door.įor many experiencers, their adventures seem unquestionably to provide evidence for life after death, and the profound effects the experience can have on them is just added confirmation.
Published in Skeptical Inquirer 1991, 16, 34-45 Near-Death Experiences: In or out of the body?
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