Death is final… or is it?
Countless people have died and then come back to life.
What they recount after their near death experience is often eerily similar regardless of the
circumstances.
These phenomena may provide a glimpse into the afterlife, or according to some scientists,
they may be something else entirely.
Around 9 million people in the United States alone have been recorded as having near death
experiences.
This often changed the way they thought about life and how they interacted with the world
around them.
The craziest thing of all is the commonalities between these unconnected events.
Someone is considered clinically dead by medical professionals when their heart stops beating.
However, with advances in medical technology, just because someone is dead doesn’t mean
they can’t be brought back to life.
Thanks to defibrillators and CPR someone can have their heart restarted several minutes
after it's stopped beating.
This is what we consider a near death experience.
During this time some pretty wild common occurrences happen.
Many people have recounted seeing a bright light or have an out of body experience.
Oftentimes they watch what is going on in the operating room, or hear conversations
that they were technically dead for.
However, there is also a more sinister side to near death experiences.
A darker common occurrence of feeling deep despair and loneliness, as well as a spooky
looking female apparition can occur.
What causes these commonalities and why doesn’t everyone recover from death?
What is a near death experience actually?
Scientists are now closer to answering these questions than ever before.
The first near death experience described in a medical report came from a military doctor
in northern France named Pierre-Jean du Monchaux in 1740.
The patient had too much blood drawn while doctors tried to treat an intense fever.
In the report the patient said he “saw such a pure and extreme light that he thought he
was in Heaven.”
Even the first medical record of a near death experience includes a bright light.
But is it God, or is there another explanation?
Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, has been
pushing the boundaries of what we once thought of as death.
His research focuses on when death actually occurs.
He’s found that the cells inside your body don’t die when your heart stops, but may
last up to ten hours after.
He has hypothesized that if we understand what consciousness is, and the connections
between all of the cells in our body, we may be able to bring people back to life long
after they have been declared clinically dead.
His research has also led to other findings, especially in explaining what a near death
experience could be.
Parnia believes that someone’s consciousness continues long after the brain and heart shut
down completely.
This may account for certain common experiences people have when they die and are brought
back to life.
Parnia sees thoughts and consciousness as being fundamentally different from synaptic
activity.
He claims that there is no evidence that shows how brain cells could generate thoughts, so
for right now we are working within the constraints of what we can know based on the technology
we have.
But if thoughts and consciousness lie somewhere else in the body this may explain why near
death experiences occur.
If consciousness continues on after the body is dead then perhaps that is why even though
there is no brain activity, people still have vivid visions or are even able to recount
things that happened around them while they were dead.
However, other scientists are a little more skeptical, and have a different explanation
for what near death experiences could be.
Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the University of Kentucky Medical Center provides a less
mystifying explanation for near death experiences.
Nelson claims that many of the visions, out of body experiences, and lights associated
with near death experiences can also be triggered when someone isn’t in any danger of dying
at all.
This may indicate that the things people go through during near death experiences aren’t
necessarily connected to the event itself, but to normal activity of the human nervous
system.
The commonalities that people recount during near death experiences also seem to be similar
to those that happen when someone faints.
Nelson suggests that it may not be the threat of death that causes the experiences, but
the feeling of being threatened itself.
Conducting experiments in the safe conditions of a laboratory was shown to generate similar
experiences as in near death patients.
A study from 1994 found that fainting caused the participants in the experiment to feel
at peace, entering another plane, and being surrounded by light.
All of these things are also associated with near death experiences.
The scientists found that out of body experiences were not only common in fainting trials, but
in the general population as a whole.
In one study of 13,000 people researchers found almost 6 percent of them had an out
of body experience.
So it would appear that this type of event is not reserved for those who have had a brush
with death.
If this is the case then what about all the other near death experiences?
If they can be explained by natural processes of the body, then scientists would be in a
better position to explain why certain events occur when someone dies and then is brought
back to life.
For example, out of body experiences are also commonly reported by people with epilepsy
or who go through sleep paralysis.
Since the latter is non-life threatening it stands to reason that the near death experience
is not causing the out of body experience, but something else may be.
Nelson has conducted research where by using a small electrical charge to zap someone’s
temporoparietal cortex, which is the part of the brain that regulates how the body perceives
itself, out of body experiences can be triggered.
But Nelson thinks that the events which occur during near death experiences can be explained
by something all of us do each night.
A lot of the things that people see during a near death experience can also occur when
someone transitions between wakefulness and the rapid eye movement stages of sleep.
Nelson believes that the key characteristics of near death experiences are normal things
that occur during a sudden shift in states of awareness.
This is called the “borderland” of consciousness.
The switch that controls when we change between states of consciousness like wakefulness and
REM sleep is housed deep in the brainstem.
Nelson hypothesizes that when someone undergoes a near death event like cardiac arrest, the
brain malfunctions.
When this happens the different states of consciousness may begin to bleed together,
which could cause the person to undergo several of the things associated with near death experiences.
It isn’t so much that the person is seeing beyond this life, as their perception of reality
is being merged together with multiple levels of consciousness.
This idea is called the REM intrusion theory.
Nelson even takes it a step further by explaining why the bright light during a near death experience
is so common.
When the brain switches between wakefulness and REM sleep it is actually activating part
of the visual system.
So, it is logical that when someone passes through the “borderland” of consciousness
they would experience some form of light.
This wouldn’t be a light from the great beyond, but instead a byproduct of the brain
switching back and forth between consciousness levels, and accidentally activating the visual
system of the body.
But not all scientists believe that near death experiences can be explained away by malfunctioning
brainstems and the blending of consciousness levels.
Bruce Greyson who is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia has been studying near
death experiences for almost 50 years.
He claims that the REM intrusion theory can not explain every near death experience.
The most concrete example of this is in people who have near death experiences while under
conditions that inhibit their brain from going into REM sleep.
This happens for example when someone is given anesthesia.
The biggest problem that Greyson has with the REM intrusion theory is that some data
just doesn’t support it.
He even acknowledges that REM intrusion theory seems plausible for explaining near death
experiences, but the information available, and the data that has been collected, does
not make sense if the slipping between consciousness levels is the sole reason for all near death
experiences.
One of the most significant examples for Greyson that has him believing there is more to near
death experiences than just blending of consciousness levels actually came from his own work.
He had been trying to revive a patient who had overdosed on drugs and was clinically
dead.
When he and his team were able to revive her, the patient was able to recall precise details
from what was happening while she was dead.
The patient repeated back a conversation that Greyson had with her roommate in the next
room over, and that Greyson had spaghetti sauce on his tie while he was trying to revive
her.
After he had talked to the patient he concluded that: “the only way it could have happened
was if she had left her body, and that made no sense to me at all.”
Greyson does not believe that REM intrusion theory can explain this example of a near
death experience with every detail that the patient remembered.
What it comes down to is that more research needs to be done, but there are two camps
when explaining near death experiences.
The first is that when someone dies and is brought back to life there is a malfunction
in the brain that switches it between different consciousness levels.
This can cause hallucinations, and as Nelson believes, can explain almost all of the commonalities
between near death experiences.
On the other hand scientists like Parnia and Greyson think there is more to near death
experiences than that.
They are not saying that people are experiencing God, or that they are getting a glimpse at
the afterlife, but that there is a part of consciousness that we don’t quite understand
yet.
Either way, people who have gone through a near death experience normally have some type
of transformation.
Whether it is seeing a bright light, having an out of body experience, or something more
sinister like experiencing agony or deep loneliness; something happens.
More often than not people come out of a near death experience having a new perspective
on life, one that actually drives them to be more thankful and more caring for others.
Whether this is a result of altered states of consciousness, or glimpses into what awaits
us in the afterlife, is inconsequential to survivors of near death experiences.
Just being alive is a gift to them.
Scientists on the other hand are driven to explain things, it is what they do.
The phenomena associated with near death experiences most likely will be understood at some point,
it just may be after we have moved on to whatever comes after this existence.
Now check out “Best Evidence of Life After Death.”
Or watch “What Happens To You Just Before You Die.”