Episode 019: Near-Death Experiences

If you suddenly find yourself floating through a long, dark tunnel toward a bright light, you might have just died. In this episode, we discuss NDEs, or near-death experiences, and some of the theories surrounding this phenomenon. Around the world, people of different cultural and religious backgrounds report similar experiences amongst those who have died and then come back from the brink. ... A calm settles over you as you rise up above your body. A pinprick of light expands into a tunnel. You notice the smell of your grandmother’s brown bread baking in the oven. Then you see your grandma. Wait. You haven’t seen her for decades, not since she died. And then there’s your grandfather beside her. And your friend from elementary school who asphyxiated on her scrunchie back in 6th grade. Oh, and there’s the delivery guy who used to bring you pizza every single week back in college. What’s he doing here? More importantly, what are you doing here? Did you... just…. die? Yes. If you find yourself unexpectedly in a long dark tunnel heading toward the light, or surrounded by dead relatives and friends, you probably died. Sorry. Join us for a brief conversation about Near Death Experiences. Right here. Right now. Okay, so, good news, if you’re listening to this right now, you’re most likely among the living. Hello, dear listeners, welcome to another of our monthly meditations. I’m so glad you could join us. My name is XXX and I’ll be filling in for Carly, our resident Mortician’s Daughter, for your macabre meditation this month. So today, I would like to talk about near death experiences, or NDEs, so take a moment to settle in and let’s go. For those who are unfamiliar with “near death experiences,” I’ll start by explaining that in order to have one, you’re going to need to die. Not, like, forever dead, but just for a short time. Hopefully, presumably, a very short time. There is a commonality in the experiences of the temporarily dead that warrants examination. I mean, maybe you’ve heard accounts of the dark tunnel and deceased loved ones by those who briefly shuffle off their mortal coil, only to return again. Whether NDEs offer a taste of what awaits us after death, or they are just the effects of a brain in the chemical throes of collapse, no one can say for certrain. But today, we’re going to discuss the possibilities of both and more. Around the world, many people report a range of phenomena after a brush with death. A sense of floating or or being out-of-one’s-own-body. A feeling of calm or even euphoria. Visiting with loved ones long ago lost. The freaky part is that there seem to be too many similarities to dismiss the idea of NDEs totally outright. At the same time, there are also a number of theories about why people see what they see when they die temporarily. So let’s start with what constitutes a near-death experience… According to a study conducted in 2011, an estimated 9 million Americans have reported an NDE. NINE MILLION. So, an NDE, or near-death experience, is brought on by a brush with death. These days, we tend to think of NDEs as only pertaining to people who have actually died, like their heart stops beating or their brain shuts down. What's gonna kill you, but not, like, forever? Injury to the body or brain, cardiac arrest, oxygen deprivation when drowning, even general anesthesia - have all launched people into the ethereal with only a tourist visa. The coming back part is important because that, dear listeners, is how people know that these “death” experiences happen to those that are “near death.” And therein lies the challenge. If they didn’t really die permanently would their experiences match those of a person who is actually, you know, dead. Anyway, this is a convoluted subject when you think about it and it seems like it’s even harder to study. Most studies are just personal accounts from individuals who have come back from the brink. Generally, that type of “study” doesn’t always match up with other modes of research. However, there is such a marked similarity between differing accounts from people around the world. And these similar experiences often lead to similar results. NDE survivors often report life-changing effects. Some report being shaken to the very core of their being. Some become more spiritual, some more altruistic, less anxious. Many no longer fear death. One study on “Near-Death Experience among Iranian Muslim Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Survivors” published in the Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, reported that “Results showed seeing the borderline between this world and the afterlife was by itself what alleviated the fear of death. This is inconsistent with the fearful association death has among the Iranian population and in the Iranian culture,” according to researchers. This is a good time to bring up Bruce Greyson… Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. Prior to this, Greyson was part of the medical faculty at the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut, where he was the Clinical Chief of Psychiatry. He’s conducted a number of studies within the arena of near-death experiences and has written extensively on this subject, including his book, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond. In one of his many articles on the subject titled “Near-Death Experiences and Attempted Suicide,” Greyson describes a patient with (quote) “a pathological grief reaction whose third near-fatal suicide attempt culminated in a NDE in which he seemed to be reunited with deceased loved ones in a transcendental realm. The patient then underwent a sudden and sustained personality change, with cessation of his self-destructive suicidal behavior and alcoholism.” Sounds like people end up feeling better about living and dying, but we’ll sit tight and see what else we can dig up. Alright, before we get into the hypothesized causes of NDEs, let’s get into what an NDE feels like? What do people see? There’s the tunnel, of course, and a bright light. Christof Koch of Scientific American writes, "A jarring disconnect separates the massive trauma to the body and the peacefulness and feeling of oneness with the universe." Peaceful, yes, oneness, yes, I’m here for it. Serenity, release, euphoria - all these words are good words. Survivors report things like leaving their body or floating above their bodies. Some claim they were aware of everything happening around them when they were dead by all medical counts. There's the famous "shoe on the ledge" story... which I didn't even know was famous until I went looking for it. I just thought it was a story I heard and I wanted to substantiate it with a little sleuthing. And, like I said, the shoe on a ledge, and the woman who lived… and, uh, died… and then lived again to tell the story. So, a woman named Maria flatlined in the parking lot of a hospital as she was being wheeled inside. She left her body and her spirit rose up, up and up, and then she was like, Hey… is that a shoe? Yep, the floating spirit of Maria saw a shoe sitting on a ledge of one of the windows of the upper stories of that hospital. When she was resuscitated down below, in the emergency room, the first thing she did was ask someone to retrieve the shoe. Her daughter went to the upper levels and found the shoe on the ledge that Maria saw when she was outside of her body, floating skyward. Some people have tried to debunk the story of Maria and the shoe, but Kimberly Clark Sharp, the Clinical Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Washington who reported on the incident in her book, Into the Light, has contended that the story went down exactly like she said. Okay, tunnel, floating, lights all the good feels we talked about earlier - Oh! Flashing memories from the past. Lots of people also talk about experiencing time differently - like suddenly being disconnected from the machinations of time and space. What else? What else? Well, some people have talked about beings of light, intense feelings of love, as well as an awareness of being dead. There are actually a myriad of experiences associated with near death and there is also a high rate of overlap between tales so it’s a popular jumping off point for speculators and scientists. But before we go into some of the theories about NDEs, I feel it’s important to take a look at one of the little pieces of information that often gets left out of books and conversations about near death experiences… not everyone has a positive near death experience. Once again we owe thanks to Dr. Bruce Greyson, who co-authored an article about "Distressing Near-Death Experiences" with Nancy Evans Bush. In this study, the authors note that over the past four decades, most of the NDEs reported have been described "as pleasant, even glorious," but some NDEs are the inverse. Maybe even, and I quote, "void, and hellish." In one account, “A woman in childbirth felt her spirit separate from her body and fly into space at tremendous speed, then saw a small ball of light rushing toward her: “It became bigger and bigger as it came toward me. I realized that we were on a collision course, and it terrified me. I saw the blinding white light come right to me and engulf me.”” One woman who died from hypothermia, experienced her life in flashing memories, before coming back later said, “I was filled with such sadness and experienced a great deal of depression.” These examples are what are called “inverse NDEs,” meaning they are the opposite of what usually happens with an NDE. The other two types identified in this study are “Void NDEs” and “Hellish NDEs.” These two things are just like their names suggest. In the first group, the void group, we have, “an ontological encounter with a perceived vast emptiness, often a devastating scenario of aloneness, isolation, sometimes annihilation.” Just to be honest, this one kinda freaks me out a little when I think about it. The solitary nature of singular consciousness in the vast emptiness of the universe makes my head want to explode. Big bang explode. One woman described her near-death experience as initially pleasant, but then, “It was no longer a peaceful feeling; it had become pure hell. I had become a light out in the heavens, and I was screaming, but no sound was going forth. It was worse than any nightmare. I was spinning around, and I realized that this was eternity; this was what forever was going to be…. I felt the aloneness, the emptiness of space, the vastness of the universe, except for me, a mere ball of light, screaming.” Okay, moving along… The Hellish NDEs are what one might expect. You know, you die and you’re suddenly thrust into a nightmarish landscape populated by tortured beings. And, they do vary quite a bit from person to person. In one example, “An atheistic university professor with an intestinal rupture experienced being maliciously pinched, then torn apart by malevolent beings.” In another, a woman described the experience as such, [there were] “horrific beings with gray gelatinous appendages grasping and clawing at me. The sounds of their guttural moaning and the indescribable stench still remain 41 years later. There was no benign Being of Light, no life video, nothing beautiful or pleasant.” Well, that is terrifying. In this study, researchers pointed out that the religious element they encountered most often pertained to an absence of God and not some judgemental presence. However, in these cases of distressing NDEs, individuals do experience an increased fear of death. No surprise either because just hearing about them makes me a little afraid of death and that’s not generally the way that I feel. Is there good news here? Certainly. The most common responses to negative NDEs also comes in threes. And those three categories of common responses are known as The Turnaround, Reductionism, or The Long Haul. With the turnaround, a person who has a negative near-death experience then decides to change the course of their life. Maybe rectifying past wrongs, maybe changing professions, or adopting different spiritual practices. Survivors in this group turn their lives around, so to speak. In that middle group, those who move toward Reductionism, we find a more dismissive attitude. As one woman, who experienced a negative NDE, said, , “There are actual rational explanations for what I experienced…. The brain, under stress, releases natural opiates that stop pain and fear…. Lack of oxygen disrupts the normal activity of the visual cortex…. Too much neural activity in the dying brain causes stripes of activity…. Our eyes, even closed, interpret those stripes of activity as … the sensation of moving forward in a tunnel…. There are more brain cells concentrated in the middle of the cortex than on the edges so as we get closer to death, the brain interprets all those dense cells with their crazy activity as a bright light in the middle of our visual field. It’s all very scientific.” She makes a lot of valid points here. Many people, scientists included, believe that the Near-Death Experience is only a romanticisation of what is actually a tangible process in the brain that we can’t quite explain in full just yet. Anyway, according to the study by Greyson and Evans Busha, reductionism only provides a bandaid to buffer anxieties, but does not resolve those looming questions or fears for individuals. And in the third category of responses to distressing NDEs we have our Long Haulers. Yes, those in for the Long Haul carry these frightening experiences around with them for the rest of their lives, never fully addressing the existential dread that arises from memories of that experience. Negative NDEs can cause years of trauma. And, oftentimes, this trauma is underreported and under addressed. The explanations for what causes a near-death experience are far and wide, from the transcendental to the clinical.There are the physiological in nature, based on the abnormal activity in the temporal lobes and a surge of fun neurotransmitters, like endorphins, that all kick in when the brain goes into its “I’m dying” mode. There are neuroanatomical models of NDEs that draws an association between types of neural activity and some common themes among those narratives. Like an altered sense of time, the feeling of flying, those come from the right temporal-parietal junction. The ethereal presence, glowing bodies, those come from the left temporal parietal junction. Very science-y. All sorts of things that happen in the body during these moments of extreme stress have been put in as a contender for the root cause of the human near death experience. Neurochemicals, oxygen in the blood, the limbic system, blood gas levels, sooo many things. Some argue that people have a preconceived idea of what’s supposed to happen during a NDE and that informs the experience. That’s the expectancy model. Some people argue its just a dissociative state that can sometimes accompany trauma or serious physical injury. A personal favorite is the birth model which contends that the NDE is actually just a reliving of the trauma of birth with the tunnel of darkness serving as the vaginal canal. For some reason, I think if this was the case, people might not have the warm fuzzies often associated with near-death experiences. I imagine the feelings we experience at birth are less about warmth, acceptance, and safety and more about angry, cold, and recently evicted from your home in the worst possible way. Whether NDEs are the workings of an active mind actively dying or an otherworldly glimpse of our post-death lives, I cannot say. I do have a few fun tidbits for you to ponder before we part ways. First of all, near-death experiences don’t just occur amongst people who actually, physically die and come back to life. In fact, the word goes back to a French phase that translates to "experience of imminent death." Psychologist and epistemologist, Victor Egger, coined the term to describe a phenomena amongst climbers, like mountain climbers, experienced during falls. This was expanded to people who fell off of scaffolds and the like. That brush with death, and not just by modern definition, could bring on these same NDEs. There's actually a whole range of experiences known as deathbed phenomena that pertains to people approaching death that bears some striking resemblance to NDEs. These people are near death, but not in the same regard. And, once again, there’s a lot of overlap between these two. Next up, we have another approach to NDEs that doesn’t actually involving dying, or almost dying, or approaching death… And this comes to us from Buddhist monks. A three-year study revealed that “some Buddhist meditation practitioners are able to willfully induce near-death experiences at a pre-planned point in time. Unlike traditional NDEs, participants were consciously aware of experiencing the meditation-induced NDE and retained control over its content and duration. The Dalai Lama has also asserted that experienced meditators can deliberately induce the NDE state during meditation, being able to recognize and sustain it.” That’s pretty cool. And, finally, if these visions of loved ones are fabrications of the dying mind, my question is: why do people only dream about dead relatives? Why not conjure up the living ones too? I mean, if it’s all just fodder in the brain? Maybe, in this detached level of consciousness, our brains are able to string together a picture of what we imagine death to be and then populate that landscape with only deceased loved ones. That leans into the expectancy model, I guess. Why wouldn’t an elderly parent have a vision of their child guiding them to their next state of being? I know, beyond a doubt, that my mother is going to be pretty upset if I’m not around to tell her what to do when she gets to heaven. Nope, she’s not going until I get there. If I die first, she’ll definitely be the Debbie Reynolds to my Carrie Fischer, Rebel space princess. . Okay, well, I hope I’ve given you something to think about. Whether we really are in some transcendental shift in the plains of beings or just dealing with a flood of neurochemicals, I definitely suggest pondering the possibilities. Think of Maria and her shoe on the hospital window ledge. And with that, I must bid you adieu. We’ll be back next month with another meditation on the macabre. So, until we meet again, I hope you remain dark in thought, but never in deed.