Is There Meaning Behind a Near Death Experience?

In 2017, a family member named Adelle told me about a personal experience that continues to have a profound effect on her.

The previous year she had fallen while painting a mural high up on a pool house wall. She landed head-first on the concrete slab surrounding the pool. Her head was bleeding, and she was unconscious. Her husband called 911 and the paramedic who checked her pulse said that her heart had stopped beating.

“Mike,” she said, “I was floating inside a tunnel whose walls were made of clouds. It was so peaceful. I sensed the presence of beings that I could only call angels. As I rose through the tunnel, I could see a bright light at its end and an indistinct figure seated in a sort of chair. I felt waves of warm love coming from an other-worldly figure. It enfolded me in its arms, and I experienced being loved as never before. I wanted to stay with this being, but it told me that this was not my time to die. I would have to go back. I woke up on the concrete floor, suffused with the feeling of being loved. Mike, you never have to worry about death again. It is so beautiful.”

Two weeks later, I traveled to Northern California to visit my daughter and her family. One morning I took a bike ride to their health club. As I pulled up to the bike rack, a woman about my age pulled up beside me and said hello. We shared a few comments about the beautiful day. I told her my wife had died several months earlier and that it was good to get away from New York.

She said, “if you have a few moments I would like to tell you a story that might help you.” We entered the club together and sat down on the patio overlooking the pool and tennis courts. She told me her name was Michelle and that she had been the supervisor of a town in Colorado.

“One morning about five years ago, I was bicycling to work. An SUV turned the corner and drove into me. Mike, it rode over me and then backed up over me. The SUV fractured several bones, damaged my spleen and caused other internal injuries. A few of my co-workers were on a hill overlooking the intersection and saw the accident. They called 911 and saved my life. I was in terrible pain until they anesthetized me in the ambulance. I found out later that my heart had stopped beating for several minutes. But what happened next is really the story I want to tell you.” I immediately recalled Adelle’s story and asked, “Did you have a near death experience?” She smiled. “You bet I did. And it was a doozy.”

She told me about the tunnel of smoke, the presence of angelic beings, the feeling of being loved, drifting upwards toward the large indistinct being bathed and light, and then sitting in its lap.

“Mike, this experience was the most beautiful of my life. I felt no pain at all. Just an overwhelming love coming from this being. I wanted to stay in its arms forever. It told me that my work was not yet done on earth and that I had to return. But I didn’t want to return and asked it not to make me go back into all of the pain and suffering.”

Michelle then awakened in a hospital bed swathed in bandages, with casts on her legs and left arm. “Although I was still in pain, I found myself dwelling in the experience. I became certain that I had nothing to fear from dying. It was beautiful.” She hugged me and I thanked her for sharing her near-death experience. She said, “That event is always with me. I can return to it whenever I feel upset and need comfort.”

The Science Behind NDEs

Raymond Moody, a philosopher and physician, coined the term “near-death experience” in his 1975 best seller, Life after Life. Most NDEs are triggered during life-threatening events as when the body is injured by a heart attack, asphyxia, shock or blunt trauma. About 10% of hospitalized patients with cardiac arrest experience an NDE.

The medical community estimates that millions of people have had an NDE. Many who experienced an NDE were pronounced “dead” by a physician. Some were revived long after it seemed possible.

About three quarters of these share commonalities in their experience: the sensation of floating up a tunnel; of experiencing a beautiful but unfamiliar environment; of encountering “angelic” beings; of being unconditionally loved; of revisiting events in their lives; of feeling both calm and ecstatic.

NDEs are often compared to mystical experiences reported by people ingesting psychoactive substances such as psilocybin as part of religious or spiritual practices. Yet NDEs are no more likely to occur in devout believers than in secular or nonpracticing individuals.

Many neurologists have also noted similarities between NDEs and the effects of a class of epileptic events known as complex partial seizures that can be preceded by an aura and accompanied by ecstatic feelings.

In the lab, neurosurgeons are able to induce ecstatic feelings similar to those experienced during an NDE. They electrically stimulate a part of the cortex, the insula, in epileptic patients who have electrodes implanted in their brain. Patients report bliss, enhanced well-being, and heightened self-awareness or perception of the external world. Exciting the gray matter elsewhere in the brain can trigger out-of-body experiences or visual hallucinations.

The scientific jury is still out as to exactly why NDEs occur. Some may happen because of changes in the brain that result from severe stress or the process of dying. NDEs may also be a neurochemical response to trauma, imperfect anesthesia, or oxygen shortage.

The central paradox for science is how enhanced cognition can occur alongside compromised brain function.

Veridical Perception

To better understand the biological and chemical underpinnings of an NDE, neuroscientists have developed a test called “veridical perception.” The test determines whether a clinically dead person sees objects and hears conversations that could not have been perceived from the location of their body: for example, being at the seashore when they are lysing in a hospital. If the subjects recover, they are asked to report on the information they gathered during their NDE.

A 2013 article in the Journal of Near-Death Studies described one of the few well-documented experiments designed to identify a possible veridical perception event.

Pam Reynolds, a 35-year-old singer-songwriter had an aneurysm removed from the base of her brain. Before the surgery, technicians packed her in ice to cause “hypothermic cardiac arrest,” a procedure in which blood is drained from the head and the heart is stopped. The cold temperature preserves the patient’s cells. Her doctors confirmed that her brain did not process information during the operation. Her EKG flatlined for several minutes, indicating that she was effectively dead in both her body and brain.

When they revived her, she reported that she had experienced an NDE. She said that she heard snippets of conversations among the surgeons and recalled the shape of the bone saw they used to open her skull. Yet none of these veridical perceptions occurred while her EKG flatlined.

A Dream of Something Better

For many, the blissful harmony of near death is a religious epiphany, a sudden burst of spiritual light not dissimilar to that encountered by St. Paul of the road to Damascus. For science, it is a biochemical reaction occurring in a brain under stress. While both interpretations may appear to be at opposite ends of the experiential spectrum, perhaps they’re not.

A brain under stress can be likened to a brain in a dream state. In both instances, there appears to be a search for meaning as neurons send out electrical pulses in a search for connection. When these connections occur, the brain tells us a story.

During a dream state, the story is usually disjointed and kaleidoscopic, composed of often unrelated elements culled from our personal lives, hopes and expectations. What appears to be unique about an NDE is that the elements of the story are no longer disjointed. Instead, they come together into a singular narrative shared by many: the dream of an afterlife and a journey to something better.