The Art of Dying

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Now, these experiences are common, and whenever I give a talk on approaching-death experiences, someone in the audience always has some experience to report. What we hope to do is find out exactly how common they are. We are building on the work of previous researchers such as Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson (1977), who examined deathbed visions in terminally ill patients in the United States and India. Other phenomena are also frequently reported at the time of dying. Light at death is very common. A mother in one of our studies whose son was age 7 and dying of leukemia in the hospital told us that, as he became more seriously ill, the curtains were drawn around his bed. She told us that, in the 20 minutes before he finally stopped breathing, the whole area around his bed was flooded with light – the same light that you talk about in the near-death experience: the light of love and compassion. And as he died, the light slowly faded.

Benor, D. (2002). Spiritual healing: Scientific validation of a healing revolution. Professional supplement. Southfield, MI: Vision Publications. So you can calculate straight away that over one million Americans have stood in the light: very powerful. Think of all those people who have experienced an altered state of consciousness. The world is changing. But not only that: more defibrillators and pacemakers are being implanted into hearts, and as the heart quite often stops in this process, this means that even more people are going to have NDEs and their aftereffects. In any case, Dr. Kerr, a careful researcher, found that dying people did see animals and pets in DBVs. You can learn more about his research here: There are many things that add credibility to DBV accounts. They have a remarkable consistency, similar to what you find in NDE reports. Indeed, there is consistency not just within DBV reports themselves, but between DBV and NDE reports, suggesting that DBVs and NDEs may be tapping into the same post-death reality. And to make a point that I have already mentioned, double blind, randomized, controlled trials on many aspects of spiritual medicine are now being conducted. The role of spirituality in medicine has become a legitimate and frequent subject of empirical research. A book by Daniel Benor, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution. Professional Supplement (Vision Publications 2002) is an excellent reference volume.

Focusing In On the Near-Death Out-of-Body Experience

I could cope no longer with three small children and one dreadful husband (whom I later divorced). I took a massive overdose of sleeping tablets and was not found for four hours. I was rushed to the nearest hospital by ambulance from the RAF base in Wales, where we lived at the time. I very nearly died and was unconscious for four days. On the fourth day I was slipping away. I had a cardiac arrest and the doctors and a sister were working on me. Michael O'Brien. (2003). "The Day I Died". British Medical Journal. 326(7383): 288. Retrieved 2014-06-03. Morse, M., and Perry, P. (1990). Closer to the light: Learning from the near-death experiences of children. New York, NY: Villard. One more example. Arthur Myers, a journalist, relates the account of an old chow named Kelly, who was very ill and approaching death. The family decided to have her euthanized. The family had two other dogs — a younger chow and an old, blind schnauzer. Broome, K. (producer). (2003). The day I died [Videotape]. London, England: British Broadcasting Company.

There are good reasons for studying childhood NDEs. Very few children will have been exposed to the idea of NDEs. Young children especially have a poorly formed view of the idea and permanence of death. Children whose parents have no religious views or convictions are even less likely to have been told about what to expect at death. In his 1989 paper, Harvey Irwin suggested that children who had had no religious instruction would be ideal to test the sociocultural conditioning hypothesis against the paranormal-spiritual hypothesis. In other words, if kids who do not know about NDEs have an NDE, you cannot explain it by saying they have learnt about it as a cultural experience. Our Study of Cardiac Arrest Survivors’ NDEs The data available suggest that NDE phenomena are described differently in different cultures. Tunnels, for example, seem to be a particularly Western feature. Take, for example, the journey from this dimension to an otherworldly dimension. Japanese NDErs do not report tunnels. Instead, they have caves. People will walk towards a cave, which will be the entrance to the new reality. Quite often, they report having come up to a dark river where there was a boatman. This feature is absolutely inherent in their culture. Among hunter-gathers, the transitional journey most often involved a river. They reported going on journeys, most commonly by getting into a boat and paddling for three days before arriving at an otherworldly area. Willoughby Britton and Richard Bootzin’s 2004 study is interesting, but unfortunately the data set is too limited to draw any conclusions. They suggested that near-death experiences are a manifestation of temporal lobe epilepsy. This suggestion has been made on previous occasions by other authors, and it is always made by those who do not deal with epilepsy on a daily basis and who do not have a comprehensive understanding of the features of an epileptic seizure. No epileptic seizure has the clarity and narrative style of an NDE. And this is because all epilepsy is confusional. Epileptologists all agree that one thing that near-death experiences are not is temporal lobe epilepsy. Britton and Bootzin’s paper is, I think, going to bias the near-death literature in a way that is quite unjustified by the data of the study. Do animals appear in death-bed visions? Well, before I get to that, let me say a word about DBVs in general, since some people may not be familiar with the term. Death-Bed Visions

Approaching-Death Experiences and the NDE: A Model for the Dying Process?

DBVs are well documented in the human realm and cannot be explained away as hallucinations, medical conditions, medication, or the result of pre-existing beliefs. DBVs appear to offer a glimpse into an intermediary world, and their purpose seems to be to aid in the transition to the afterlife. I always did believe in God but only because it was bred into me. But since that experience I have a lot of faith towards God and towards life beyond our lives on Earth. I firmly believe he made me well and helped me through all my time of rearing three children alone in the years that followed.” Mitchell, E., and Williams, D. (1996). The way of the explorer: An Apollo astronaut’s journey through the material and mystical worlds. New York, NY: Putnam.

Greyson’s (2003a) American study was of 1,595 patients admitted to a cardiac care unit with heart trouble. He found an incidence of 10 percent NDEs among cardiac arrest survivors and found that the more severe the illness, the more likely the survivor was to report an NDE. And what he said is this: ‘‘The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion [absence of blood flow to the brain] raises particularly perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function’’ (p. 275). So that is now in the literature. And based on that, Sam Parnia and I have a paper being reviewed for Neuroscience Letters in which we propose the experiment which I am going to show you. Whether or not they will publish it, I do not yet know. Dr. Kerr was the first researcher to systematically interview dying patients themselves. Previous researchers had focused on reports of medical professionals or relatives at bedside. Most experiences occurred during illness. The illnesses varied very widely but were usually severe though not always life-threatening. We had two accounts from people whose near-death experiences occurred at the time of an attempted murder when they were unconscious. Two per cent of our sample had NDEs during a suicide attempt. Gigi had died many years ago. The mother loved her deeply — more than him and his brother, Rob jokes. What has been learned from the retrospective studies? We learned about the phenomena of NDEs. We learned how often they occur: in about 10 percent of people who come close to death or who survive actual clinical death. We learned a little bit about the circumstances, and, most important, we learned about cultural differences, which are huge.

Attempts to Understand Cardiac Arrest NDEs

So, now we come to the really important question: what happens when an NDE occurs during a cardiac arrest, and why is this important? He has had a longstanding interest in brain function, the relationship of the mind and the brain, and the “problem” of consciousness. He has an extensive research record and has published over 240 papers in medical and scientific journals on brain function and also several books. Suddenly there was the most brilliant light shining from my husband’s chest, and as this light lifted upward, there was the most beautiful music and singing voices. My own chest seemed filled with infinite joy, and my heart felt as if it was lifting to join this light and music. Suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder, and a nurse said, ‘‘Sorry, love. He’s just gone.’’ I lost sight of the light and the music and felt so bereft at being left behind. Animals can’t tell us what is happening as they approach death. Rover can’t say, “I see my old pal Fido in the corner. He has come to get me.” So we have to rely on observation and inference, which are subject to error. Still, here are a couple of suggestive cases.

At the bottom it was light and quite busy and bustling. The other people were strangers and although they didn’t speak and neither did I, somehow I asked the way and I was told to follow the red light. In 2000, Oxford University Press published the Handbook of Religion and Health. In it, authors Harold Koenig, Michael McCullough, and David Larson have brought together into one volume all the research on spiritual medicine. All of you who are caregivers or doctors should have it on your shelf, or urge your libraries to acquire it. In 1963, I nearly died from a suicide attempt. I went down into a deep pit, slowly, like Alice in Wonderland, as if I were in a lift. Among those 450 participants, 76 percent were women. Does this finding mean that women are really spiritual and that men have a long way to go? No, I do not think so. I think it is simply that women are much better letter writers than men. The age distribution of those who experienced NDEs was interesting: there were equal numbers in each decade. In other words, the number of people who reported having had their NDE sometime in their first decade of life, age 0–10, was very similar to those who reported having it in their second decade, and so forth. So our findings indicate that there is no privileged age range for having an NDE.

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So then, as far as science is concerned, the NDE cannot occur at the point the heart stops, it cannot occur at any point during the period of unconsciousness, and it is unlikely to occur at the point of confusional arousal, because it is not typical of that level of consciousness; and if it occurred after recovery, the NDErs would say it occurred after recovery, because they know they have recovered. So there are real difficulties in accepting that the NDE happens when the NDErs say it happens: during unconsciousness. So are you beginning to feel the significance of the timing of the NDE both for neuroscience as well as for our understanding of the NDE? Another 4-year-old boy, two weeks after his discharge from hospital, reported, ‘‘A man with wings came to see me while I was in hospital. I could see him out of the corner of my eye.’’ He went on to describe an out-of-body experience. He recalled his still-living grandmother talking to him at his bedside, and he could not tell her to shut up, as he was ‘‘asleep.’’ So he was outside himself and watching. He was also adamant that his grandmother knew who this winged man was, but I do not think she did; I do not think she could see him.