Evidence of the Afterlife
The Science of Near-Death Experiences

Jeffrey Long, MDwith Paul PerryDEDICATED TO THE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SHARED THEIREXCEPTIONAL EXPERIENCES WITH US OVER THE YEARS, AND TO THOSE
WHO WILL SHARE IN THE FUTURE. YOU ARE AMONG THE GREATEST OF
TEACHERS.
DEDICATED TO NEAR-DEATH-EXPERIENCE RESEARCHERS,PAST AND FUTURE.
DEDICATED TO JODY LONG, WHOSE EFFORTS MADE THIS BOOKPOSSIBLE.

Contents
Introduction
1. First Encounters
2. Journey Toward Understanding
3. Proof #1: Lucid Death
4. Proof #2: Out of Body
5. Proof #3: Blind Sight
6. Proof #4: Impossibly Conscious
7. Proof #5: Perfect Playback
8. Proof #6: Family Reunion
9. Proof #7: From The Mouths of Babes
10. Proof #8: Worldwide Consistency
11. Proof #9: Changed Lives
Conclusion
Notes
About the Author

Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher

Introduction

A bit beyond perception’s reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, eachcontaining the other’s key.
—Piet Hein
It was 1984 when I first stumbled upon the phrase
near-death experience (NDE) in the pages of a
medical journal. It was several years later that I heard afriend’s wife tell of her own NDE when she nearly diedof an allergic reaction while under general anesthetic.
More than ten years later, in 1998, I started the Near
Death Experience Research Foundation and its
corresponding website, NDERF.org.
One of my goals for the site was to collect as
many NDEs as I could and to collect them through aquestionnaire that would make it easy to separate andstudy their elements. With such a questionnaire, I could
examine the individual elements in NDEs or an entire
NDE itself. I expected to be successful in an endeavor,
but as it has turned out, I have been wildly successful.
Over the course of the first ten years, more than 1,300
people who had a near-death experience spent many
hours of their precious time answering over one
hundred questions in NDERF’s detailed questionnaire.
These people are of every race, creed, and color andare from virtually every corner of the world.
That so many people are willing to share their
NDEs with others speaks volumes about the power ofthese experiences in a person’s life. Respondents
describe their experiences in a variety of ways, callingthem “unspeakable,” “ineffable,” “unforgettable,”“beautiful beyond words,” and so on. More than 95
percent of the respondents feel their NDE was“definitely real,” while virtually all of the remaining
respondents feel it was “probably real.” Not one
respondent has said it was “definitely not real.” Somesay it was not only the most real thing to ever happen
to them but also the best event of their lives. As one
respondent who nearly died in a suicide attempt wrote:

I was at peace with myself. Nothing hurt. I could only
see my life and self through that Being’s Love. There
was no negative in myself or from that Being foranything I had done, including killing myself. It [mydeed] was changed by the power of the Truth of Love,
with which it was seen. That Loving Grace, total
acceptance, complete love and truth created a joy in
me. I saw that love was in me too, not just from theBeing shining down on me; it was in me as part ofmyself. I was full of love and peace. I felt the joy inthat truth. I have no right words for it.
I have seen this type of response from many
people with near-death experiences. Imagine that—anexperience that begins with the sheer terror of a lifethreatening event and evolves into an event of wonder
and mystery!
I am a man of science, and as a result I haveexamined the data from the NDERF study in ascientific way. At NDERF we explored all of theelements in the NDEs of more than one thousandpeople, examining consistency among the accounts. In
reaching conclusions about these accounts, wefollowed a basic scientific principle: What is real isconsistently seen
observations.

among

many

different

The results of the NDERF study clearly indicate
remarkable consistency among NDE case studies.
This study finds that what people discovered during
their near-death experience about God, love, afterlife,
reason for our earthly existence, earthly hardships,
forgiveness, and many other concepts is strikingly
consistent across cultures, races, and creeds. Also,these discoveries are generally not what would havebeen expected from preexisting societal beliefs,
religious teachings, or any other source of earthly
knowledge.
In a world that is plagued by afflictions of the soul,
this is very good news. Many of the personal andsocial problems that face humanity—drug and alcoholabuse, depression, anxiety, gang violence, religious
strife, racism, and so on—could be greatly affected bysuch a powerful common experience. Because NDEs
happen to people all over the world, they are a spiritual
thread that binds us together, a common experiencethat reminds us of our mutual spiritual nature. At its
very least, the NDERF study contributes informationthat strengthens our understanding of that spiritual
thread.
But the NDERF study is also exceptionallyvaluable in the way that it brings us closer tounderstanding what happens when we die. I long ago
quit believing that death is the cessation of ourexistence. It took me a long time to reach this point. I
was born into a scientific family. My father was thechair of the Department of Pharmacology at the
University of Iowa and a onetime contender for theNobel Prize. Through him and others in our family I
developed great respect for science.
By scientifically studying the more than 1,300
cases shared with NDERF, I believe that the nine lines
of evidence presented in this book all converge on one
central point: There is life after death.
The convergence of several lines of evidence—
like the nine presented in this book—builds a muchstronger case than only a single line of evidence.
For example, suppose we had only two lines of
NDE evidence. We may not be 100 percent convincedthat these two lines of evidence prove an afterlife, but
perhaps each line of evidence by itself is 90 percent
convincing. Combined, these two lines of evidence bymathematical calculation are 99 percent convincingthat the afterlife exists.1
Given how complex it is to mathematically analyze
only two lines of evidence, imagine how mind-boggling
it would be to mathematically analyze all nine lines of
NDE evidence. Fortunately, that won’t be necessary.
The NDERF website includes a custom-designed form
that automatically performs these mathematical
calculations. This website wizardry allows you to
calculate for yourself how strongly you believe the nine
lines of evidence prove the existence of an afterlife.
You can also see the results obtained from every otherperson who has completed this form. This form, andother material supplementing this book, is available on
the NDERF website at our page that explores
evidence of the afterlife (http://www.nderf.org/afterlife).

The form addresses concepts presented throughout
this book. Thus I would encourage you to finish reading
this book before you complete the form.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING A NEAR-DEATH
EXPERIENCE
Before continuing, I should provide a detailed
explanation of what a near-death experience is.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are events thattake place as a person is dying or, indeed, is alreadyclinically dead. People who have NDEs are called
near-death experiencers (NDErs). From the time neardeath experiences were first medically researchedand described by Dr. Raymond Moody in his
pioneering book, Life After Life, in 1975, medical
doctors and other researchers have examined thisphenomenon in depth.2
There is no widely accepted definition of neardeath experience. The NDERF study took astraightforward approach by defining both the neardeath and experience components of near-deathexperience. I considered individuals to be “near death”
if they were so physically compromised that they would
die if their condition did not improve. The NDErs
studied were generally unconscious and often
apparently clinically dead, with absence of heartbeat
and breathing. The “experience” had to occur at thetime they were near death. Also, the experience had tobe lucid, to exclude descriptions of only fragmentaryand disorganized memories.
Throughout this book we will present the results of
the NDERF survey. Unless otherwise indicated, thesewill be the results from surveying 613 sequential
NDErs who completed the most recent version of the
NDERF survey. 3 This version of the survey included
the NDE Scale questions.4 The NDE Scale asks
sixteen questions about the content of the experienceand is the most validated research method to help
distinguish experiences that are near-deathexperiences from those that are not. The 613 NDErs
whose survey results we are presenting here all had
NDE Scale scores of 7 or above, further validatingthese experiences as actual NDEs. The original
version of the NDERF survey studied responses from
413 NDErs. The NDE Scale questions were not usedin the original NDERF survey.
No two near-death experiences are identical.
However, when many near-death experiences arestudied, a pattern of elements that commonly occurs in
NDEs is easily seen. These elements usually occur inconsistent order.
Researchers have concluded that NDEs may
include some or all of the following twelve5 elements:6

1. Out-of-body experience (OBE): Separation of
consciousness from the physical body
2. Heightened senses
3. Intense and generally positive emotions or feelings
4. Passing into or through a tunnel
5. Encountering a mystical or brilliant light
6. Encountering other beings, either mystical beingsor deceased relatives or friends
7. A sense of alteration of time or space
8. Life review
9. Encountering unworldly (“heavenly”) realms

10. Encountering or learning special knowledge
11. Encountering a boundary or barrier
12. A return to the body, either voluntary or involuntary
Below are descriptions of each of these elementsfrom the case studies I have amassed over more thanten years of research, as well as the percentage of
NDErs from our study group who experienced each of
the elements.

1. Out-of-Body Experience (OBE)
I could feel my spirit actually leaving my body. I saw
and heard the conversations between my husband
and the doctors taking place outside my room, about
forty feet away down a hallway. I was later able toverify this conversation to my shocked husband.
One NDEr observed in the out-of-body state thereaction of the doctor to nearly losing this patient:

Why were you so upset, screaming and swearing in
the operating room? Didn’t you know that I could hear
every word you said?
This NDEr then shared what the doctor responded:

You are right. I was so frustrated and tired and angry
in that operating room that I just started screamingwhen we were losing you. It was either scream or cry.
You were dying, and there was not a damned thingthat I could do to stop it. I will have to rethink what I
say to an unconscious patient from now on, won’t I?

Out-of-body experiences are often the first NDE
element. The NDERF survey asked 613 NDErs, “Didyou experience a separation of your consciousness
from your body?”
In response, 75.4 percent answered “Yes.”

2. Heightened Senses
There isn’t a way to explain it, as there is no feelinglike it here on earth. It was crystal clear. It was likegoing home at last, at last. A feeling of belonging, of
meaning, of completeness.
It just seemed so much more real than anything I had
ever experienced in my entire life.
The NDERF survey asked, “How did your highest
level of consciousness and alertness during theexperience compare to your normal, everyday
consciousness and alertness?” Of the NDErs
surveyed, 74.4 percent indicated they had “Moreconsciousness and alertness than normal.”

3. Intense and Generally Positive Emotions or
Feelings
This is the hardest thing to try and explain…. Words
will not come close to capturing the feelings, but I’ll
try: total, unconditional, all-encompassing love,compassion, peace, warmth, safety, belonging,understanding, overwhelming sense of being home,and joy.
All I felt was love, joy, happiness, and every wonderfulemotion you could feel all at once.
Total peace, total calm. I was not in the least bit afraid
or anxious.
When we got to the light, the totality of life was loveand happiness. There was nothing else. And it was
intense. Very intense and endless in scope.
[I felt an e]xtreme sense of love and peace andbeauty that I cannot describe in words.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you have afeeling of peace or pleasantness?” To this question,
76.2 percent selected “Incredible peace orpleasantness.” The NDERF survey asked anotherquestion about a specific emotion during the NDE:
“Did you have a feeling of joy?” NDErs responded tothis question with 52.5 percent selecting “Incrediblejoy.”
A small percentage of NDEs are frightening to the
NDEr. This topic is addressed in detail on the NDERF
website.7

4. Passing Into or Through a Tunnel
My next awareness was of being submerged andcradled in a warm, wavy, wafting motion at the
opening of a tunnel. The tunnel had billowy soft sides
and was well lit, with the tunnel dimensions

decreasing and brightness increasing as it got closer
to a single bright light.
We traveled very fast into a tunnel. The tunnel was all
different colors: blue, yellow, white, green, and red.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you pass into or
through a tunnel or enclosure?” Of NDErs responding
to this survey question, 33.8 percent answered “Yes.”

5. Encountering a Mystical or Brilliant LightA brilliant white light at the end of the tunnel, andwhen the wings enveloped me I became part of thewhite light.
A beautiful light drew me to itself; the light still
touches me with awe, and tears come immediately.
At first the light was blue. Then it transitioned to white.
It was an opalescent white; it almost glowed, but did
not shine. It was bright, but not intense bright, likeglowing bright—pure bright. Pure but not in the usual
sense of the word. Pure as in something you’ve neverseen before or could ever describe or put into words.
It was as if we passed through a wall into my light pod
directly. There was a large majestic center light andthen the individual yet connected pod lights exactly
like the center light only smaller. I think now the pod
lights, like mine, were other souls connected to thecenter light, God.

The light may be described as brilliant, “like amillion suns,” but virtually never hurts the NDEr to lookat it. NDErs may dramatically describe their strong
attraction to the light and their emphatic desire toapproach or merge with the light. The NDERF survey
asked, “Did you see a light?” NDErs responded with
64.6 percent answering “Yes.”

6. Encountering Other Beings, Either Mystical Beingsor Deceased Relatives or Friends
I was surrounded by other beings, or people, who I felt
as though I recognized. These beings were likefamily, old friends, who’d been with me for an eternity.
I can best describe them as my spiritual or soulfamily. Meeting these beings was like reuniting withthe most important people in one’s life, after a long
separation. There was an explosion of love and joy
on seeing each other again between us all.
My dad was right next to me, but I couldn’t see him
visually. My sister was very close; I felt she was to myleft. I felt other family members close by, but I did not
see them. My sister and other family members
seemed to be more to the left. The only person
besides my sister and my dad that I knew was there
was my grandmother. There were others there but
none I can say for certain besides the ones I
mentioned.
I heard my mother’s and daughter’s voices, but mydaughter, who was only approximately two at the time,

well, it was the sound of her voice grown up, but I knew
it was her voice. They called my name, and my body
moved like through an air current very quickly. It was
like the wind carried me so fast, and I saw a bright,
bright light very quickly and then a beach, and then I
saw my mom and daughter standing on the beach;my daughter was grown up.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you meet or see
any other beings?” In response, 57.3 percent
answered “Yes.” When NDErs encounter deceased
beings, most are deceased relatives as opposed tofriends or loved ones. Some NDErs encounterseemingly familiar beings, but they cannot recall
having previously met them. Later in their lives some
NDErs recognize a picture of a deceased relative as
the being they encountered in their NDE. The relative
may have died years or even decades before the
NDEr was born.

7. A Sense of Alteration of Time or Space
When I first left my body I had my diving watch on. I
took some very unscientific measurements of the
distance I traveled by watching for features andmeasuring them by the second hand on my watch.
Totally unscientific. But my conclusion was and has
always been: I was measuring time in an altered time.
The ground never moved in a linear fashion; thedistances were erratic at best. The distances werealways changing, sometime[s] repeating and theninstantly becom[ing] longer or short[er] than theprevious distance. Yet my watch was always ticking

without change. My intuition and impression were that
I was in a different time zone, one where my earth[l]ywatch was of no use or inept at making any
measurement or reflecting time. Also without mistake
I would say this whole thing took an hour or more. It
seemed to me that I was in the NDE for a very longtime. But when I asked my diving partners how long
had I been unconscious, they estimated five to ten
minutes. Thus I had another reason to support why
my diving watch didn’t seem to measure the time in
my NDE.
It seemed as though I experienced so much in sucha small length of earthly time. Where my soul had
traveled to know nothing of time as we know [of] time
passing on earth.
Both time and space in earth stopped completely.
Simultaneously, “the time and the space” on theother side was completely alive, evident[ial], and real.
Yes, while I was in the light, I had…[no] sense of timeas I know it here on Earth. In other words, no sense of
the serial nature of time…past, present, or future. All
times (past, present, and future) were experienced atevery moment in time while I was in the light.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you have any
sense of altered space or time?” To this question the
majority, 60.5 percent, answered “Yes.” Another
NDERF survey question focused only on an alteredsense of time, asking, “Did time seem to speed up?”
NDErs responded to this question with 33.9 percent

selecting “Everything seemed to be happening all at
once.”

8. Life Review
I saw my life flash before me shortly after I left mybody and was still in the hospital room. I was told that
I was going to help educate and teach many people,
and that is exactly what I am doing now.
I saw every important event that had ever happenedin my life, from my first birthday to my first kiss tofights with my parents. I saw how selfish I was and how
I would give anything to go back and change.
Next he showed me my life review. Every second
from birth until death you will see and feel, and [youwill] experience your emotions and others that you
hurt, and feel their pain and emotions. What this is foris so you can see what kind of person you were andhow you treated others from another vantage point,and you will be harder on yourself than anyone tojudge you.
I will not see what others have done to you. I will see
what you have done to others.
Life reviews involve a review of prior events of the
NDEr’s life. Fragments of one’s earthly life may beseen, or the review may be panoramic, covering all of
one’s earthly life. The NDERF survey asked, “Did you
experience a review of past events in your life?” To
that question, 22.2 percent of NDErs answered “Yes.”

9. Encountering Unworldly (“Heavenly”) Realms
Well, the end of that tunnel was the most peacefulplace; it was beyond my imaginings, pure, serene,
and loving.
The landscape was beautiful, blue skies, rolling hills,
flowers. All was full of light, as if lit from within itself
and emitting light, not reflecting it.
There was such beauty, beautiful beyond expression.
There was also a bright city or something like a city inthe distance. The colors and structures of everything[were] beautiful…awesome.
All around me I could see and feel a beautiful peace
and tranquillity with love and peace…. As far as theeye could see to my left was a beautiful landscape oftulips of every color imaginable. To my right was awall of a beautiful blue that matched the sky.
The sound of that music I cannot possibly
describe with words because it simply cannot beheard with that clarity in this world! The colors wereout of this world—so deep, so luminous, so beautiful!
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you see or visit
any beautiful or otherwise distinctive locations, levels,or dimensions?” To this question 40.6 percent of
NDErs chose “Yes.”
Asking this question in a more general way, theNDERF survey asked, “Did you seem to enter someother, unearthly world?” To this question 52.2 percent
of NDErs responded that they encountered anunearthly realm.

10. Encountering or Learning Special Knowledge
When I looked into his eyes all the secrets of theuniverse were revealed to me. I know how everythingworks because I looked into his eyes for a moment.
All the secrets of the universe, all knowledge of alltime, everything.
I understood (I use this term because I did notactually hear) the colored drops were the experiencesof all who had lived. The experiences existed as
separate items yet belonged to the whole. The whole
was the collective knowledge of all.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you have a senseof knowing special knowledge, universal order, and/or
purpose?” To this question 56.0 percent of NDErs
answered “Yes.” Another question asked, “Did you
suddenly seem to understand everything?” To thisquestion, 31.5 percent responded that they seemed tounderstand everything “About the universe,” and 31.3
percent responded that they seemed to understandeverything “About myself or others.”

11. Encountering a Boundary or Barrier
On my side of the boundary, time seemed to go slow.

On the other side, time went by faster.
There was this door in front of me with this musiccoming out and people celebrating with utter joy that I
knew and recognize[d] as home. Once [I] crossed, I
couldn’t come back.
I reached the point where I felt I had to make thechoice whether to go back to life or onward into death.
My best friend was there (who had died of cancer two
years before), and she told me that this was as far as I
could go or I would not be able to turn back. “Youhave come to the edge. This is as far as you can go,”she said. “Now go back and live your life fully andfearlessly.”
I wasn’t allowed to cross that boundary. There was no
choice.
The NDERF survey asked, “Did you reach aboundary or limiting physical structure?” To thisquestion 31.0 percent of NDErs answered “Yes.”

12. A Return to the Body, Either Voluntary or
Involuntary
I remember as I looked down at them, I said to theangel, “Why don’t they just let her die?” I did not
realize, at that time, the body that I was looking at wasmine. Then in a commanding voice, she [the angel]said, “You must go back now.”…“She must live,” shesaid in a soft calming voice. “She has a son to raise.”I was really hurt that I couldn’t stay because there
wasn’t anything that I wanted more than to stay. Purelove is the best way to describe the being and placethat I would be leaving. Under protest, I was sentback.
I found out that my purpose now would be to live
“heaven on earth” using this new understanding, andalso to share this knowledge with other people.
However, I had the choice of whether to come backinto life or go toward death. I was made to understandthat it was not my time, but I always had the choice,and if I chose death, I would not be experiencing a lotof the gifts that the rest of my life still held in store.
One of the things I wanted to know was that if I chose
life, would I have to come back to this sick body,
because my body was very, very sick and the organs
had stopped functioning. I was then made tounderstand that if I chose life, my body would heal
very quickly. I would see a difference in not months or
weeks, but days!
The NDERF survey asked, “Were you involved inor aware of a decision regarding your return to the
body?” To this question, 58.5 percent answered “Yes.”

EXPERIENCE PROVIDES THE BEST EVIDENCE
As far as I’m concerned, it makes perfect sense thatthe best evidence for understanding what happens
when we die would come from those who actually did
nearly die or even experienced clinical death. This

commonsense perspective is certainly validated in the
NDERF study. The substantial majority of people who
had a near-death experience believe their NDEs arereal and are evidence of an afterlife. For NDErs,
having a near-death experience is their personal proofof both the reality of the NDE and an afterlife.
In science, confirming the reality of a concept
generally comes not from a single observation or study
but from many independent studies with different
methodologies. This cross-checking among scientificstudies has always been the foundation for validating
scientific discoveries. Thus it is vitally important to notethat the NDERF study findings are corroborated byhundreds of prior NDE studies conducted by scores of
NDE researchers. Throughout this book we cite many
major NDE studies by other researchers. These otherstudies almost always make the same observations
and come to the same conclusions as the NDERF
study. This adds to the converging lines of evidence
that lead me to conclude: There is life after death.
I know this belief takes me out on a limb. Despitea recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and PublicLife that shows 74 percent of Americans believe in life
after death, I also know that this belief is often
attributed to people with deep religious conviction.8 I
want to make it clear that I am both a scientist and abeliever in life after death.
I have reconsidered much of what I was taught inmedical school. This reconsideration began many
years ago, when NDERF had just started. I was in the
medical library searching fruitlessly for information
about near-death experiences. It was unusually quiet
that day, and as I sat amid tens of thousands of books
and journals, I easily became lost in my thoughts. At myfingertips were the greatest medical and scientificstudies and concepts in the world. Yet as I searched
them, I found that the answer to the mystery of neardeath experiences was not here. In the collective
knowledge around me from the world’s greatest
doctors and medical scientists, I could find precious
little to help me fully understand the near-deathexperience.
I left the medical library with the question I had
come in with: What’s the key to understanding near-

death experiences?
Later the answer came to me. It was so simple,
yet it required a mind-set different from the one
cultivated in my academic training. The answer: listen,and listen carefully, to the people who have gone
through a near-death experience. They surely are oneof the best sources for understanding what awaits us
at the brink of death and beyond. Since realizing that
fact, I have never looked back. Near-death studies
focus on stories and the people who tell them. It isthrough these people and their stories that answers to
many important questions about mortality may befound.

1
FIRST ENCOUNTERS

A man should look for what is, and not what he thinks
should be.

—Albert Einstein
I was in my medical residency at the University of Iowa,
looking for a particular article on cancer in the library.
The article I was seeking had been published in the

Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA), one of the world’s most prestigious medical
journals. The journal comes out weekly and is afascinating compilation of medical science andresearch. It is almost impossible for me to pick up an
issue and look at only one article, and that is what
happened on this day in 1984 when I sat down withissue number 244.
I began thumbing through the journal until I
reached a rebuttal to an article titled “To Sleep,
Perchance to Dream,” by Richard Blacher, MD, ofTufts University in Boston. 1 The rebuttal was a letter
written by Dr. Michael Sabom and was simply titled“The Near-Death Experience.”
What’s this “near-death experience”? I thought.
Medically speaking, I knew of no conscious

experience that could take place near the point ofdeath. Aren’t people generally unconscious when they
are near death? I wondered. Doesn’t the very term
unconscious imply that there is no possibility of anorganized conscious experience?
Leaning forward in my chair, I began to read theletter that would change my life.
Blacher had rattled Sabom with a comment about
near-death experiences, saying that they tell us nothingof the final state of death itself. Blacher went on toinsist that misinterpretation of this experience could be
avoided with a closer examination of thisphenomenon, which is what Sabom had recently done.
Sabom’s response to Blacher’s article had someelectricity running through it.
I have recently conducted a systematic investigation ofthese experiences in 107 persons known to havesurvived an episode of unconsciousness and near
death (i.e., cardiac arrest and coma). Using
standardized interview techniques, the social, religious
and demographic backgrounds of each person were
evaluated along with the details of each medical crisis
event and any possible recollections from the period of
unconsciousness….
…I have had patients describe extensive “out ofbody” experiences during open heart surgery in which
they observed the operation in distinct “visual” detail.
To date, I have been unable to find an adequate
medical explanation for the NDE. Blacher suggeststhat these experiences represent a “fantasy of death”
and are manifestations of a hypoxic brain attempting
to deal with “the anxieties provoked by medical
procedures and talk.” Experimentally, persons

subjected to severe hypoxia have consistently reported
having a confused and muddled memory with severe
perceptual impairment preceding the loss of
consciousness. This differs from the clear “visual”
perception of ongoing physical events following loss of
consciousness as found in the NDE. Moreover, many
NDEs have occurred in settings far removed from “theanxieties provoked by medical procedures and talk.”
Blacher points out that “the physicians must be
especially wary of accepting religious belief asscientific data.” I might add that equal caution should
be exercised in accepting scientific belief as scientificdata.2
Copyright © 1980 American Medical Association. All
rights reserved.
After reading Sabom’s response I was stunned.
Even though Sabom had written only a brief letter tothe editor, that letter addressed an aspect of medicine
that was entirely new to me. Near-death experiences!
Nothing in my medical training had prepared me for a
discussion of the topic. It was as though I had missed
a vital class and had now found some study material to
begin filling that gap in my education.
I asked myself, Why isn’t there more research on
this phenomenon? I remember sitting for some time inthe library thinking about what I had just read. Then thesound of a book being closed brought me back to thepresent. I was studying to become a radiation
oncologist—a physician who uses radiation to treat
cancer—and I couldn’t let myself get sidetracked, evenfor an afternoon.
I put the subject of near-death experiences out ofmy head and went on with my medical studies.
Or at least I tried to go on as if nothing had happened.
After my chance encounter with Sabom’s letter in
JAMA, it seemed as though near-death experiences
sprang up everywhere. I read about them in magazinesand newspapers and watched them on television as
people told remarkable stories of leaving their bodies
at the point of death and going to another world.
I read the classic works on near-deathexperiences and found a wide variety of definitions forthis experience. The term near-death experience wascoined by Dr. Raymond Moody in his bestselling book,
Life After Life, a work about the first widely known
study of NDEs.3 Dr. Moody first defined near-deathexperience in 1977 to mean “any conscious
perceptual experience which takes place during…anevent in which a person could very easily die or be
killed (and even may be so close as to be believed or
pronounced clinically dead) but nonetheless survives,and continues physical life.”4Over a decade later Moody redefined near-deathexperience as “profound spiritual events that happen,
uninvited, to some individuals at the point of death.”5
Regardless of the exact definition, the questionthat stuck in my mind was: How is it that people whoare clinically dead or nearly so can have these highly
lucid experiences? For example, in Moody’s book The
Light Beyond, a woman’s heart stops on the operatingtable as anesthetic is being administered, due to anallergic reaction. Rather than having no awareness ofher surroundings, as the notion of death would lead me

to assume, she told Dr. Moody that she became“relaxed and at peace.” Then a highly lucid series of
events began to unfold. Here in her own words is her
NDE:

I found myself floating up toward the ceiling. I could
see everyone around the bed very plainly, even myown body. I thought how odd it was that they were
upset about my body. I was fine and I wanted them toknow that, but there seemed to be no way to let themknow. It was as though there were a veil or a screen
between me and the others in the room.
I became aware of an opening, if I can call it that.
It appeared to be elongated and dark, and I began tozoom through it. I was puzzled yet exhilarated. I cameout of this tunnel into a realm of soft, brilliant love andlight. The love was everywhere. It surrounded me andseemed to soak through into my very being. At somepoint I was shown, or saw, the events of my life. They
were in a kind of vast panorama. All of this is reallyjust indescribable. People I knew who had died were
there with me in the light—a friend who had died incollege, my grandfather, and a great-aunt, among
others. They were happy, beaming.
I didn’t want to go back, but I was told that I had toby a man in light. I was being told that I had notcompleted what I had to do in life.
I came back into my body with a sudden lurch.6
This was an experience that happened tosomeone whose heart had stopped! How could that

be? After all, death, simply defined (according to
Merriam-Webster Online), is “a permanent cessationof all vital functions—the end of life.” Yet I was reading
dozens of case studies in which people whose hearts
had stopped and who were in an unconscious state
recounted lucid events containing elements that wereremarkably similar to one another.

ASTOUNDING STORY
I was impressed by the work of Moody and many otherearly NDE researchers but still very surprised at thelack of even more extensive research. After all, isn’t
humankind’s most sought after answer the one to thequestion Do we survive bodily death? I began towonder if I myself should become involved inresearching these fascinating, seemingly otherworld
journeys.
Then something happened that helped me
decide.
A friend of mine from undergraduate days
returned to Iowa for a visit, and we got together fordinner so I could meet his new wife. Before long, myfriend’s wife began to talk about her allergies, which
turned out to be varied and quite severe—so severe,in fact, that at one point she had a severe allergic
reaction while under general anesthesia and “coded”
on the operating table.
As she talked about her heart stopping, she had
no fear in her voice, just a sense of wonder. I decided
to probe a little.
“That’s odd,” I said. “I have heard my patients talkabout facing death, but not with that tone of voice.”
The table fell silent. It was clear that I hadstumbled onto something. I looked around andstruggled to ask the question that was on my mind.
“Did anything happen to you when you coded onthat table?” I asked.
Her immediate and emphatic response was“Why, yes!” And right there, in this dimly lit restaurant
on a frigid winter’s night in Iowa City, I heard my first inperson near-death experience.

Sheila’s NDE
I have always suffered from multiple allergies.7 Thiswas merely a lifelong nuisance until that fateful day
that my allergies became a much greater threat to
my life. I told the surgeon and anesthesiologist about
all my allergies. This was elective surgery and not an
emergency. In spite of the medical team doing
everything they could, I had a severe allergic reaction
to a medication during the operation. This allergic
reaction was so severe that my heart stopped.
Immediately after my heart stopped I foundmyself at ceiling level. I could see the EKG machine I
was hooked to. The EKG was flatlined. The doctors
and nurses were frantically trying to bring me back tolife. The scene below me was a near-panic situation.
In contrast to the chaos below, I felt a profound senseof peace. I was completely free of any pain. My
consciousness drifted out of the operating room andmoved into a nursing station. I immediately
recognized that this was the nursing station on thefloor where I had been prior to my surgery. From myvantage point near the ceiling, I saw the nursesbustling about performing their daily duties.
After I watched the nurses a while, a tunnel
opened up. I was drawn to the tunnel. I then passed
through the tunnel and became aware of a bright lightat the end of the tunnel. I felt peaceful. After I passed
through the tunnel, I found myself in an area ofbeautiful, mystical light. In front of me were several of
my beloved relatives who had previously died. It wasa joyous reunion, and we embraced.
I found myself with a mystical being ofoverwhelming love and compassion. “Do you want togo back?” I was asked. I responded, “I don’t know,”which was just like my old indecisive self at the time.
After further discussion, I knew the choice to return tomy physical body was mine. It was a most difficult
decision. I was in a realm of overwhelming love. In
this realm I knew I was truly home. Finally, I returned
to my body.
I awoke in the ICU over a day later. I had tubes
and wires all over me. I could not talk about myprofound experience. Later I returned to the floor of
the hospital where I had been before surgery. Herewas the nursing station I visited during my NDE. I
finally worked up the courage to share what I saw
during my NDE with one of the nurses. The nurse
responded with a look of shock and fright. This was a
Catholic hospital. Not surprisingly, a nun was sent totalk with me. I patiently explained all that I had
experienced. The nun listened carefully and thendeclared my experience to be the “work of the devil.”
You can understand my enormous reluctance toshare my NDE with anyone after this.

When Sheila finished her story, there was silence
around the table for some time. I don’t remember
eating any more of my meal although I may have. I do
remember being so astonished by the story that I fellsilent as the evening wore on. What I had just heard
was the most dramatic story that had ever beenshared with me. Every instinct I had as a human being
and a physician told me that this experience wasabsolutely real. In those moments my perception of theworld was completely changed. I remember thinking
these experiences could change my views about life,
death, God, and the world we live in.
I left the restaurant that night determined to begin
my own research on near-death experiences. I later
devised ambitious plans to collect hundreds of neardeath experience case studies and scientifically study
them, to determine conclusively for myself if NDEs
were reality or just phantasms of the brain.
My studies would not happen for another ten
years.

2
JOURNEY TOWARD UNDERSTANDING

Build it and they will come.

—W. P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams
The year was 1998, and I was now in Las Vegas
practicing the medical specialty of radiation oncology.
The nineties was the decade in which the Internet
exploded. Everyone was rapidly becoming smittenwith this big brain in the sky, and I was no different.
Despite the steep learning curve of building
websites with primitive software and slow connections,
I had decided in 1997 to build the Radiation Oncology
Online Journal (ROOJ.com) as a way of sharing
credible information about this medical specialty withthe world. It took a tremendous amount of time andeffort outside of my clinical practice to assemble thisnonprofit website, which I maintain as a way ofproviding solid information to the public about cancer
treatment.
By the time I completed the ROOJ site I was anexpert in website computer code. Then the idea hit
me: build a website that will collect near-deathexperience case studies. By doing this I could amassa large number of NDE stories from around the world.

Working with a large number of NDEs is importantbecause medical studies involving a large study groupproduce more reliable results than do those studying asmall group of people.
I built on the curiosity and work of those who hadgone before me. Over the ten years since I heard
Sheila recount her personal story, I had stayed in close
contact with research in the field of near-death studies.
Hundreds of scholarly articles had been written on
near-death experience, including publications in manyof the world’s most prestigious medical and scientificjournals. I read the works of many major NDE
researchers, including those of Dr. Moody; Melvin
Morse, MD; Bruce Greyson, MD; Michael Sabom, MD;
and Ken Ring, PhD. I also found myself fascinated withsome of the individual stories, like that of Betty Eadie(Embraced by the Light1). All of these books reliedheavily on case studies. These stories of individual
NDErs fed the sense of mystery I associated with thissubject.
Now I was even more interested in searching forthe truth than I had been ten years earlier. The
implications of these experiences were so profoundthat I wanted to research the subject to determine ifthey were truly real.
The Internet was an ideal way to carry out thisresearch. Through a website, I could reach people
around the world who were willing to share their neardeath experience with others. They weren’t being paid
to write about their experience and had no intention of
appearing on television. They would simply tell theirstories directly in their own words. I would offer aseries of questions aimed at helping NDErs fully
express and deeply explore their incredibleexperience. There would be no interviewer present topossibly guide the answers or encourage
embellishment, and no time constraints. Reading theirshared stories would be like reading the most intimate
of diary pages. By collecting NDEs via the Internet, I
could examine the content of a large number ofexperiences, reliably determining similarities anddifferences, and find out once and for all if NDEs arereal or imagined.
In the past a considerable amount of research had
been accomplished but often with only a few NDEs.
This wasn’t the fault of the researchers. Case studies
of NDEs are not easy to find. Although some research
indicates that as much as 5 percent of the U.S.
population has had a near-death experience, many
people keep them secret or find no reason to entrust
their most intimate spiritual experience with theirdoctor or researchers.2
An unfortunate reason NDErs might not share
their stories is the attitude of many in medicine toward
these experiences. I have heard many heartbreaking
stories from NDErs who shared highly accurate
observations of their own resuscitations, only to havephysicians dismiss their experiences as insignificant.
Even though there is no reason NDErs should haveany conscious awareness of their resuscitation, theiraccounts were given short shrift by physicians whoshould have marveled at their patients’ experiences
rather than ridiculed them.
I spent many years serving on the board of
directors of the International Association for NearDeath Studies. During our meetings I heard far too
many stories of the problems NDErs encounteredwhen they tried to tell their near-death experiences tothe medical staff. One of the classic stories was apatient who told his doctor about his NDE in front ofseveral nurses. When the patient finished telling hisstory, the doctor looked up from his clipboard andsaid, “Don’t think too much about it. It was just fantasy.”
When the doctor left the room, the nurses closed
in around the crushed patient and said, “It’s not
fantasy. We hear about these events all the time frompatients. Doctors like him live in fantasy. They neverhear these because they don’t listen to their patients.”
This was one way in which taking case studies
over the Internet was superior to interviewing people
directly. People who have these intimate experiences
are sometimes reluctant to be interviewed in person
and in a formal way about their NDE. They may feelthat the interviewer isn’t sincerely interested in theirexperience, or they may feel awkward about sharing
such an unworldly experience with others.
Responding to an Internet survey, by contrast,
offers the NDEr a chance to share these remarkable
events as if they are talking to themselves. Rather thanbeing forced to overcome any discomfort they might
have with an interviewer, they are comfortably
recounting their own story privately, by themselves.
They also can take as much time as they want. Many
NDErs shared their appreciation with me after they
took the survey. They found the survey helped them toaccurately and comprehensively convey theirexperience.
This is why I felt (and still do) that an Internet
survey is more effective in many ways than a face-toface interview.
Of course, I had concerns as I put together the
NDE website survey. For example, how could I tell forcertain if the stories being told were valid? I pondered
this question a lot and decided to rely on the tried-andtrue scientific method of redundancy. Redundancy ininterviewing means asking the same question (orquestions that revolve around the same concept)
several times in slightly different ways. For instance, inthe demographic portion of the questionnaire, there isa box to check if the person had an out-of-bodyexperience. One would expect that if this box was
checked, then the answer to the question “Did you
experience a separation of your consciousness fromyour body?” should be “Yes.” If we find inconsistencies
in a person’s answers, we can check the narrative to
see what the NDEr really experienced. Later, afterlarge numbers of NDEs were shared, I was impressedat how consistent the responses were to the redundantquestions.
The NDERF Internet survey reaches NDErs who
have never shared their near-death experience withanother person and would be unlikely to be reached byany other methodology used to study NDEs. The
NDERF survey asks, “Have you shared thisexperience with others?” To this question, 8.5 percent
of NDErs answered “No.”Importantly, many studies have directly compared
the reliability of Internet surveys with the more
traditional pencil-and-paper surveys by studying
groups of people who took surveys with both methods.
The consensus of these studies is that an Internet
survey is as reliable as the pencil-and-paper survey
method. This further validates the reliability of the
NDERF survey.3
I already knew I needed to listen carefully to thenear-death experiencers, so it made sense to ask theNDErs themselves how accurate they thought the
NDERF survey was. Near the end of the current
website survey, I ask an important question: “Did thequestions asked and information you provided so far
accurately and comprehensively describe yourexperience?” Of 613 NDErs responding, the answers
were 84.5 percent “Yes,” 8.8 percent “Uncertain,” andonly 6.7 percent “No.” This is some of the strongest
possible validation of the reliability of the NDERF
Internet survey, from the NDErs themselves.
Finally, my background as a physician helps me
determine if a life-threatening event actually happened.
I use the Karnofsky scale, which is a medical scale
widely used to measure closeness to death. Karnofsky
scores range from 100 (no physical compromise) to
10 (moribund) to 0 (clinically dead).4 I can also
determine if the medical events described in the NDEs
are medically plausible.
In the early days of the website, I was concerned
there might be frauds or pranksters claiming to have
had a near-death experience. I am glad to say this isvery rare. For one thing, there is no incentive—
financial or otherwise—to spend a substantial amountof time filling out the lengthy and complex survey formin order to claim a false NDE. Eventually, those trying
to submit a falsified NDE discover how difficult it is to
respond to a detailed survey if they have never had
such an experience. In over ten years, we haveuncovered fewer than ten clearly fraudulent accounts
submitted on the NDERF survey form and haveremoved them promptly from the website anddatabase.
I was also concerned that there might be copycat
accounts, in which all or part of an NDE would becopied or plagiarized from another source. This has
happened, but again very rarely. When it does,
readers of the website report the copycat account, andwe remove it from the site. The enormous number ofvisitors to the NDERF website helps assure that noneof the posted NDEs are plagiarized.
I had other concerns too. Near-death experiences
are complex and might be difficult for some to express
in words. This is why many researchers in the past
have considered them to be “ineffable,” or incapable ofbeing expressed in words. It is not uncommon to hearan NDEr describe their experience as being, well,indescribable. I was concerned that many people
might find it impossible to express what happened.
Are NDEs generally ineffable? I asked myself as I
assembled the questionnaire for the NDERF site.
Given all these concerns, was I wasting my time?
The website for the Near Death Experience Research
Foundation (NDERF, www.nderf.org) was launched on
the World Wide Web on August 30, 1998. I had manyquestions about whether the NDERF site would be
successful. Was the questionnaire too long? Did
NDErs really want to share their experience with theworld?5 Would people trust a site like this?
I had not spent money on publicity for the site.
Several months later, by monitoring the Web traffic, I
could tell that the site had been visited by relatively
few. Our search engine ranking was a pitiful 64.
Had I wasted hundreds of hours to accomplish
nothing? Would enough experiences ever be sharedwith NDERF to answer my questions about the reality
of NDEs?

Humbled, I continued to work diligently on the site.
By now I had told several friends about the site andshared my concerns that few people were actually
visiting it, let alone filling out the questionnaire. When I
said this, some of my friends would simply smile andutter one of the most popular movie lines in history: “Ifyou build it, they will come.” This is the classic line fromthe film Field of Dreams, in which an Iowa farmerbuilds a baseball field on his farm in hopes that several
long-dead baseball players will come there to play.
As you can imagine, “build it and they will come”
is not the creed of evidence-based medicine. We liketo start with a little more science than that. As a result, I
still cringe a little whenever I hear this Hollywood
aphorism. However, I continued to build the site inhopes that, yes, they would come.
And finally, come they did. By December 1998 I
downloaded the first twenty-two case studies from thewebsite with great anticipation. I was jubilant. With all
the effort I had put into the site, I was now going tohave information about NDEs from the source—
people who had the experiences! As a scientist and a“prove it to me” kind of man, I personally needed
precisely this kind of information to begin toscientifically study NDEs.
Those first twenty-two case studies didn’t
disappoint. As I read them it started to become
obvious to me that the NDEs were real. I could see thesame pattern of elements that Dr. Moody and otherresearchers had outlined in their work, including suchelements as consciousness occurring apart from thebody at the time of a life-threatening event.
Reading these early case studies was exciting
beyond my wildest dreams. It became clear to me that

by studying a large number of these NDEs in words
that came directly from those who had experienced
them, I could hope to eventually provide some answers
to humankind’s most perplexing question: What
happens when we die?
Below are paraphrases6 of two of the first twentytwo NDE case studies I was honored to receive on the
NDERF website:

Experience #16: “I Felt Like a Fly on the Wall”
In 1963 this young man lost control of his car andcollided with a brick wall. His injuries were severe
enough to fracture his face and sinus cavities and to
break his jaw. Badly hurt, he sat on wet grass near thedestroyed
vehicleandthen drifted
into
unconsciousness. As you read this, note the calmness
with which he describes his experience as well as thepresence of a very powerful out-of-body experiencethat seemed to indicate to him that all would be well in
his life despite this near-fatal accident. Here’s hisstory:I was in a severe automobile accident several years
ago. The steering wheel smashed my face. The
accident happened in a rainstorm, and I ran off theroad and hit a tree.
For a while after the crash I felt nothing, and thenthe pain started to burn in my face. I got out of the car
and lay down, hoping it would make me feel better,but it didn’t. Finally I just blacked out. When I awoke, I
couldn’t see anything because my face was covered,but I could tell I was in a hospital from the sounds andthe fact that I was on some kind of bed.
I don’t know how long it was, but I had the distinct
sensation that I was floating out of my body. I saw myparents, who were there at the bedside, and could feel
their emotional pain. It was strange. I should havebeen in pain but wasn’t. Instead I was standing next to
my parents trying to console them as they looked attheir darling son, whom they had just been told wasgoing to die. It was horrific, but there was nothing I
could do about it. I stood next to my mother and tried
to get her attention, but I couldn’t because she didn’tknow I was there. I looked at my own body but wasn’tinterested in what I was seeing. I actually felt like a flyon the wall.
Something in my mind finally clicked as I
realized that they would eventually discover that I was
not in pain, whether it was here on earth or not. At thatpoint my empathetic pain went away and I focused on
my experience. I remember thinking, “So this is what
death is about,” as I rose further out of my body.
A light came into view and became larger andbrighter as I drew closer. I knew this was it, the end of
my life, and I wasn’t afraid. But as I drew near, a voice
shouted at me to stop. And I mean shouted. “No, notyet!” the voice said.
When that happened I felt myself return very
hard into my body. I gasped very loudly, but I knew I
was going to survive after that. When they say it’s notyour time, it’s not your time.
When I first read this man’s account of his near-fatal automobile accident, I was taken by the calmness
with which he described the sense of peace andpainlessness that came over him in the hospital. I was
also intrigued by his description of the light that formed
the boundary between life and death, as well as thestrong voice that stopped him from crossing into thelight.
This man came back from his experience with theability to “intuit people’s feelings” (his words) as wellas understand their emotional logic. Intuiting people’s
feelings may be one type of psychic experience. I
would encounter many more NDEs describing psychic
experiences in the future.

Experience #21: “Wake Up, Diane”
Diane had an unusual problem. When she sat on the
couch in the afternoon to watch her favorite soap
opera, the young woman found herself falling asleep
and having great difficulty waking up. The problem
disturbed her so much that she mentioned it to herhusband, who could offer no solution. Finally she
decided to sit up on the sofa and watch the program
rather than lie down. As it turned out, sitting up madethe problem worse. Behind her, about five feet from thecouch, was a leaking gas pipe that emitted enoughnatural gas into the room to nearly kill her. Ironically,
she would have died had it not been for a visitation by
her deceased grandmother during her NDE thatbrought her back. Here is a paraphrase of her story:

I sat myself down on the couch and started watching
my favorite soap opera, and next thing I knew

someone was yelling at me to wake up. I kept hearing
this voice telling me to “wake up, Diane, you have towake up.”
When Diane opened her eyes, she was looking at
her grandmother who had died when she was only
three years old. The grandmother smiled and told
Diane to get up and follow her to safety. When she got
up to follow, Diane realized she had left her body,which was now below her on the sofa. She felt no fear
as she looked down at her body. She also felt no fearat the realization that there were two spirits elevatedwith her, one on either side of her spiritual body.
While out of her body she felt a sense ofenormous peace and love. One of the spirits told her
she could either stay in her spiritual body or return tothe physical body below. It was a tough decision for
Diane, but one that led to her choosing the physicalbody because she still had things left to do on earth.
With the making of that choice, Diane took a deep andpainful breath, and then another, until she awoke andrealized that she had nearly been asphyxiated by thegas leak.
Needless to say, the gas leak was fixed soonafter Diane’s NDE. The experience, however, had alasting effect on her life. Here is a paraphrase of what
Diane wrote:

The experience taught me that everything is known.
At the time, I did not feel it was important to ask
anything. God has made it so we will know everything
when we die.

WORLDWIDE PARTICIPATION
These twenty-two case reports were the first in what
would be an explosion of global participation on the
NDERF website. In the decade since NDERF began,readers have sent hundreds of e-mails expressing
gratitude for how meaningful the stories are to them. I
have received e-mails from cancer patients andpeople with other serious illnesses who take great
comfort in coming to the same conclusion as I, that life
continues after bodily death.
Ultimately, NDEs in more than twenty languages
have been shared with NDERF. Before I knew it,readers from more than 110 countries were devouring
more than 300,000 page views per month on the
NDERF website.
At first I considered the variety of languages to bea problem. The NDEs that were sent from people inother countries in languages other than English had to
be translated into English, and online translationengines didn’t do it very well. I barely had time toanalyze the experiences that people had entered in
English, let alone find translators.
Then Jody, longtime webmaster of NDERF, cameto the rescue. She is an attorney who is just as
interested in spiritual matters as in those ofjurisprudence. We met shortly before I moved to
Tacoma, Washington, in the year 2000. When we firstmet, I could tell that she had a very strong spiritual sideand that she was intrigued by the work I was doing innear-death experiences. She was unfamiliar with
NDEs but became more and more fascinated withthem as I told her about the case studies that were nowstreaming in. Even with her discernment as a lawyer,
she was taken by the consistency of the experiences.
“This is amazing,” she said one day. “And it’s all
for real.”
One of the things she had become interested inwas whether NDEs were the same from culture toculture. And if so, could the commonality of the NDEs
in different cultures create a bridge of world peace? Byhaving access to NDEs written by people in othercountries, she realized she could answer her questions
firsthand. The quest for knowledge drove Jody to go on
a Web search for translators. Over time she found over
250 volunteers willing to translate the multitude oflanguages spoken in the world. With Jody’s diligent
assistance, the NDERF site is by far the largest
publicly accessible collection of both English and nonEnglish NDEs in the world.
The near-death experiences on NDERF areedited only to correct spelling and obvious grammar
errors, remove information that would identify specificindividuals, and take out grossly disparaging remarks
about specific institutions. Other than thoseinsignificant changes, the NDEs you read on the site
are the highly charged experiences written by the
NDErs themselves.

WHAT WE FOUND
By studying thousands of detailed accounts of NDErs, I
found the evidence that led to this astounding
conclusion: NDEs provide such powerful scientificevidence that it is reasonable to accept the existenceof an afterlife.
Yes, you read that correctly. I have studiedthousands of near-death experiences. I have carefully
considered the evidence NDEs present regarding theexistence of an afterlife. I believe without a shadow of
a doubt that there is life after physical death.
My research convinces me that near-deathexperiences are the exit from this life and the entrance
to another life. As one NDEr declared, “I saw thesevivid colors of what I believe to be crystal, and theoverwhelming feeling of knowing there is an afterlife
and it is good [makes me have] no fear of deathwhatsoever!”This book presents the remarkable results of thelargest scientific NDE study ever reported using thismethodology. In the NDERF study we examined thecontent of more than 1,300 NDEs. Previous scientific
NDE studies generally examined only a few hundredcase studies at most. With great care, we analyzed thetwelve elements of the near-death experience. Bylooking deeply at the accounts of these NDErs, wehave found some answers to humankind’s oldest anddeepest questions about the afterlife.
In my work as a radiation oncologist, my life isbuilt around science. It couldn’t be any other way. I
deliver precision doses of radiation to kill cancerous
tumors. There are few other forms of medical sciencethat require such precision. I love what I do and havecarried this love of science to other parts of my life.
The data and conclusions you read here are based on
the scientific principles that I adhere to.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say that my scientificconclusions have greatly affected my level ofcompassion. Sometimes frightened cancer patientsfamiliar with my NDE research will ask me what will
happen when they die. If they ask, I confidently present

to them the evidence of the afterlife that I haveaccumulated through a decade of dedicated research.
I believe that what I share with these cancer patientshelps them to better face their life-threatening illness
with increased courage and hope.
By reviewing the findings of the NDERF study, I
have derived nine lines of reasoning that—to my mind
—prove the existence of life after death. Below arethose lines of evidence, each with its own briefcommentary. In the remaining chapters of this book, I
will examine each of the lines of evidence in depth soyou can see why I came to the conclusion I did: It isreasonable to accept the existence of an afterlife.

EVIDENCE OF THE AFTERLIFE
1. It is medically inexplicable to have a highlyorganized and lucid experience while unconscious or
clinically dead. In our NDERF research, near death isdefined as an individual who is physicallycompromised to the extent that death would be
expected unless their physical condition improves.
Those who are near death are generally unconscious
and may be clinically dead with loss of breathing andheartbeat.
To understand how remarkable it is to have aconscious experience at a time of clinical death, it is
helpful to understand that when the heart stops
beating, blood immediately stops flowing to the brain.
Approximately ten to twenty seconds after blood stops
flowing to the brain, brain activity necessary forconsciousness stops. Brain activity can be measured
by an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures
brain electrical activity. When brain activity stops, theEEG readings go flat, indicating no measurable brain
electrical activity.
Medically, I can’t conceive of any meaningfulexperience that could occur near death. Aren’t people
near death generally unconscious? Doesn’t the very
term unconscious mean that there is no possibility ofan organized conscious experience? Yet despite whatshould be a blank slate for NDErs, they describe highly
lucid, organized, and real experiences. In fact, NDErs
say they are usually experiencing a more heightenedstate of awareness than in everyday earthly life. This is
medically inexplicable given that NDEs generally occur
during unconsciousness.

2. NDErs may see and hear in the out-of-body(OBE) state, and what they perceive is nearly always
real. An out-of-body experience (OBE) is the firstelement of the experience for many NDErs. During theOBE, many NDErs describe events that they shouldn’t
be able to see, mainly because they are unconscious
or because the events are taking place somewhere
else, far away from their body. Events often include
seeing their own unconscious body as well as frantic
resuscitation efforts to revive them. Theseobservations have been verified as realistic inhundreds of reports.

3. NDEs occur during general anesthesia when
no form of consciousness should be taking place.
While under general anesthesia, it should be
impossible to have a lucid experience, let alone one ofgreater consciousness than everyday life. The NDERF
survey has yielded dozens of NDEs that took place
under general anesthesia. Here is one such incident
that happened to Debora. At the age of thirteen she
went into the hospital for minor surgery, and theanesthetic caused her heart to stop. As her doctor
struggled to keep her alive, Debora suddenly foundherself out of her body:

My heart stopped from anesthesia during surgery…. I
floated up to the ceiling and could see my body lying
on the table. The doctors were alarmed and sayingthat they were losing me. I was not scared; I was with acouple of very kind people that I believed at the time
were angels. They told me not to worry; they would
take care of me. I heard a whooshing sound and was
being propelled up through a dark tunnel toward alight…. A woman held out her hand to me; she waslovely, and I felt that she loved me and knew who I
was. I felt safe in her company. I didn’t know who she
was…. One day a few years after the surgery mymother showed me a picture of my paternal
grandmother, who had died giving birth to my father.
It was the lovely woman who held my hand at theother side of the tunnel. I had never seen a picture ofher before.
4. NDEs take place among those who are blind,
and these NDEs often include visual experiences.
Individuals totally blind from birth are completely unable
to perceive the visual world that the rest of us do ineveryday life. To those born blind, the ability to see isan abstract concept. They understand the world only
from their senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
Their dreams do not include vision, although they may
include other senses such as sound and touch. Vision
cannot be adequately explained to a person blind frombirth by drawing analogies to the four remaining
senses they possess. Yet when a blind person has an
NDE, the experience usually includes vision.

5. A life review during the NDE accuratelyreflects real events in the NDEr’s life, even if those
events have been forgotten. A life review involves areview of prior events in the NDEr’s life. Fragments ofthe person’s earthly life may be seen, or the review
may be fully panoramic with a comprehensive review
of most of the prior life. Here is one such example,
from a young woman from India who nearly died from acomplication of anesthesia:

My entire consciousness seemed to be in my head.
Then I started seeing pictures. I think they were incolor. It was as if someone had started a movie ofmyself and of my entire life, but going backwards
from the present moment. The pictures were about
my family, my mother, other members, others, and it
seemed that the most meaningful, loving, caring
relationships were being focused upon. I could sense
the real meaning of these relationships. I had asense of love and gratitude towards the persons
appearing in my flashback. This panoramic review of
my life was very distinct; every little detail of theincidents, relationships, was there—the relationships
in some sort of distilled essence of meaning. The
review was measured in the beginning, but then the
pictures came in faster and faster, and [it] seemed
like the movie reel was running out…. It went fasterand faster, and then I heard myself, along with theentire universe in my head, screaming in acrescendo, “Allah ho akbar!” (God is great).
6. Virtually all beings encountered during NDEs
are deceased at the time of the NDE, and most are
deceased relatives. When NDErs encounter people
that they knew from their earthly life, those people arealmost always deceased at the time of the NDE. By
contrast, in dreams or hallucinations the beings
encountered are much more likely to be living. This is
another distinguishing feature between NDEs anddreams or hallucinations, further suggesting the reality
of NDEs.
Many times the NDErs encounter a being that
seems familiar, but his or her identity is unknown. The
NDEr may later discover the identity of this familiar but
unknown being, for instance by looking at old family
photographs.

7. The striking similarity of content in NDEs
among very young children and that of adults
strongly suggests that the content of NDEs is not due
to preexisting beliefs. Children—even those under theage of six—have virtually the same elements in theirnear-death experiences as adults do. This is strong
evidence in itself that near-death experiences are real,
not dreams or fabrications. Why? Because very young
children almost certainly have never heard of neardeath experiences, as adults often have. They
probably don’t know anything about life reviews, tunnel
experiences, out-of-body experiences, or any of theother elements of the NDE. They become aware ofsuch things, usually for the first time, when theexperience actually happens.
The fact that children have virtually the same

elements of near-death experiences that adults domakes this one of the most convincing lines ofevidence that NDEs are real events and not due topreexisting beliefs, cultural influences, or prior life
experiences.

8. The remarkable consistency of NDEs aroundthe world is evidence that NDEs are real events.
There is a simple analogy I like to use that illustrates
this point: If families from the United States, Spain, andMexico all go to Paris, do they see the same Eiffel
Tower? The answer, of course, is yes. The only
difference might be in the way the different culturesdescribe this landmark. The same is true of people
from different cultures who have near-deathexperiences. Our collection of NDEs from cultures
worldwide shows striking similarity in content among
all of them.

9. NDErs are transformed in many ways by theirexperience, often for life. The NDERF study foundconsistent and long-lasting changes following NDEs.
Near-death experiencers have a decreased fear ofdeath, which seems to go hand in hand with anincreased belief in the afterlife. In addition, NDErs
become more loving and compassionate in theirinteraction with other people. Our study found thatnear-death experiencers may seek out helping or
healing professions after their brush with death. Also,
many NDErs in the study had been changed so muchby their experience that they were no longer the same;
they had become nicer!
The NDERF study also found that 45.0 percent of
those surveyed said they had “psychic, paranormal, orother special gifts” that they did not have prior to theexperience. They went on to provide many such

experiences in the narrative portion of their survey.
One such story of supernatural gifts came from
Thomas, who nearly died from a heart rhythm
irregularity. What he had to say about his extraordinary
gifts was short and to the point:

I felt a need to meditate. Upon doing so I was able tohear voices and see things. (Some might call [them]spirits or unearthly beings.) I have the ability to see
auras; I sense other people’s pain and am able toheal with touch. For a while I had brief spurts oftelekinesis.
One of the most intriguing—to me—transformations were the unexpected healings thatsome reported. We have encountered many suchcases in the NDERF study, including ones in whichpeople with very serious illnesses, both physical andmental, believe they were healed around the time of
their NDEs.
The transformational qualities of the NDE give me
reason to believe that whatever a person experienceson the other side, a little bit of it may come back,bringing change here as well.

STRONG AND BOLD PROOF
Any one of these lines of evidence on its own strongly
suggests an afterlife. However, I consider the
combination of these nine lines of evidence to be proof
beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of anafterlife. That is certainly a bold statement but one I am

compelled to make after years of painstaking
research.
An important NDERF survey question asks 613
NDErs what they think of the reality of their experience—how they viewed the reality of their experienceshortly after its occurrence and also at the time they
completed the survey. In response, 95.8 percent
believed at the time of completing the survey that their
NDE was definitely real. Not one NDEr said that theexperience they had was “definitely not real.”
And then there is the spiritual content of NDEs,
namely answers to such age-old questions as: Why
are we here on earth? What is important about ourearthly existence? Is there an afterlife? Now that I havereviewed thousands of NDE case studies, I can saythat the content of NDEs has substantial consistency inthese answers. I would emphasize that thisconsistency tells us that something real is taking placein these NDEs. This remarkable consistency of
spiritual messages suggests something extremely
important, not only for the person near death, but for allof us.
The true strength of the NDERF study has been
the sheer number of case studies we have examined
and the consistency of results. From this volume andthe consistency of their content and message, I believe
we have some answers to humankind’s most
perplexing question: What happens when we die?
But that is my belief. The results of ourgroundbreaking research are presented in thefollowing chapters. You be the judge.

3
PROOF #1: LUCID DEATH

For death begins with life’s first breath, and life begins attouch of death.

—John Oxenham
Speaking both medically and logically, it is notpossible to have a highly lucid experience while
unconscious or clinically dead.
After all, being clinically dead means no longer
having the perceptions or senses of a living person. If
this statement is indeed true, then how do you explain
events like the ones in the following three NDEs? Ineach of these events—cardiac arrest, brain
hemorrhage, and a shooting—the person had a very
lucid experience, which defies the fact that she or he
was unconscious and near death.
This first story is from a physician who worked
feverishly to revive an elderly patient. As you can see
in his account below, the patient appreciated thedoctor’s work from a ringside seat:

After twenty-eight shocks (I think), I got her back. She
was technically without a cardiac rhythm of her own

for 1.5 hours…. That night I went to the ICU and
asked the elderly patient if she “remembered
anything.”“Yes,” she said, “I was in the corner of the room—
floating—and saw you working on me. You shocked
me, and I was dead. I saw a massively white bright
light, and there were two angels there…telling me it
wasn’t my time and to go back. But I didn’t want to.”This patient had a brain hemorrhage that dropped
him to the ground. He said he could see “360 degrees”
around his body. Before long, he had a profoundsense of being dead, which wasn’t a bad thing, by his
account:

When I realized I was dead, which took several
minutes, a great warmth of love engulfed me, and I
felt arms wrap around me even though I had no
physical form; colors were electric, smells fantastic….
I was also aware of the overpowering secret to life inits truly simple form and felt and believed that
nothing else is real but the feeling. The experience ofdeath has been the most real and physicalexperience of my life, and the world here felt cold andheavy and unreal for sometime afterward.
This patient was in a coma for three days, during
which time he was visited by friends and family
members. Still, he insisted he was out of body for theentire time and could hear and see what people in his
room were doing. In one case he proved it. A woman

had brought a lavender candle to the hospital andplaced it in the drawer near his bed. When he cameout of the coma, he knew which drawer the candle wasin.
Not to go too far afield here, but the man also had
prophetic dreams of a personal and worldwide nature.
Not only did he “see” a relationship in his future as well
as events in his child’s future, but he also “saw” a world
economic downturn and a nuclear explosion in North
Korea.
Another example of lucid death comes fromMichelle, who was shot by her boyfriend near Boston.
She was in the process of breaking up with her beau
and was in his basement apartment when she heard aloud blast and felt a hot, piercing pain in the back ofher neck. As her mouth filled with blood, the boyfriend
grabbed Michelle and said, “What have I done?”
She left her body, and from a spot in the corner ofthe room she watched as firefighters and police
officers stepped around her body as they tried to figureout exactly what to do. The boyfriend’s brother began
to cry, and as he did he threw up on a police officer,
which was a sight that made her laugh. It was then that
she had this revelation about death:

I felt so blissful and whole…full of the most love I had
ever experienced. I thought to myself, “If this is dying,then it’s not as bad as everyone thinks it is.” Then I
saw a light from above me. It was pulling me awayfrom the room. I figured it was okay to just let thishappen, to go with the flow and accept whatever was
to be. The light was getting brighter, engulfing my
body…. Body? I had no body. It stayed back down inthat damp room. I realized that I was dead physicallybut mentally I was still alive. My soul was now my“body.” I looked up into the light. I could see someone
beckoning me to come. He was there at the end of
this lit tunnel. Then I heard a voice. It was a man’s
voice. He asked me if I was ready. I felt so good. It
was so easy.
Millions of NDEs like these happen worldwide
every year to people who are unconscious and may beclinically dead with a loss of breathing and heartbeat.
Yet they are still having highly lucid experiences at thetime of death, experiences that are clear, logical, andwell structured.
Even more remarkable is an NDERF researchfinding that consciousness and alertness is usually
greater during the NDE than everyday consciousness
and alertness!
The NDERF survey asked, “How did your highest
level of consciousness and alertness during theexperience compare to your normal, everyday
consciousness and alertness?” Of 613 NDErs
surveyed, 74.4 percent indicated they had “Moreconsciousness and alertness than normal” 19.9
percent experienced “Normal consciousness andalertness” and only 5.7 percent had “Lessconsciousness and alertness than normal.”
The concept of a higher level of consciousness
and alertness is subjective, so the NDERF survey asks
NDErs to explain this sensation in their own words.
NDErs were asked, “If your highest level ofconsciousness and alertness during the experience
was different from your normal everyday

consciousness and alertness, please explain.”Hundreds of NDErs responded to this question, andhere are some representative responses.
A woman who was struck by a car wrote,

It was only different in the sense that it was anotherspace and another perception of being…. I believe
there was an all-around awareness that didn’t require
thought in the way that our minds—brains, rather—are programmed and designed to register them. Thisis beyond light speed, if you will.
A man whose pulse and breathing stopped
experienced the following:

During the entire incident, I felt as though I had neverbeen more alert. My mind was fast, even thoughphysically I was unconscious.
UNLIKE DREAMS OR DEATH
Responses like these suggest that consciousness
continues after death. To understand how remarkable
it is to have a conscious experience at the time ofclinical death, it is helpful to understand what happensat the moment of death. Many NDEs are associatedwith a cardiac arrest, which means the heart stops
beating.1 Among those having a cardiac arrest, about
10 to 20 percent will have a near-death experience.2
At the time of a life-threatening event, it cannot bepredicted who will have a near-death experience andwho will not.
As discussed in chapter 2, when the heart stops
beating, blood immediately stops flowing to the brain.
Approximately ten to twenty seconds after blood stops
flowing to the brain, the electroencephalogram (EEG),
which measures brain electrical activity, goes flat. The
EEG measures electrical activity in the cortex, or outerpart of the brain, which is responsible for conscious
thought. Following cardiac arrest a lucid, organized,
and conscious experience should be impossible.
With a flat EEG, it is still possible for electricalactivity to be present in the lower parts of the brain,such as the brain stem. There is no chance thatelectrical activity in these lower parts of the brain could
account for such a highly lucid and ordered experience
as described by NDErs.
Lucidity coupled with the predictable order of
elements establishes that NDEs are not dreams or
hallucinations, nor are they due to any other causes of
impaired brain functioning.
The first version of the NDERF survey asked,“Was the experience dreamlike in any way?” andallowed only a narrative answer. The response to thisquestion was generally an adamant no! This indicatesthat NDErs were not having dreams. This finding is
especially significant given that the wording of thequestion encouraged a positive response if any part of
the NDE was dreamlike.
The lucidity of the near-death experience
becomes apparent when we look at descriptions ofvision during NDEs. In the many hundreds of NDE
case studies I have reviewed, descriptions of vision
are often so dramatic that I must remind myself that theNDErs are generally unconscious and often clinicallydead at the time they are experiencing extraordinary
vision. Colors are often described as unworldly in theirvariety and beauty. Once again, I am showing several
random examples from the NDERF case studies toillustrate the lucidity of vision in NDEs.
A man who experienced three near-deathexperiences wrote,

The colors on the other side are the brightest colors;
our most fluorescent colors on this earth are muddy[compared] to the brightness and vividness of thecolors that are in Heaven.
A woman who suffered a heart attack and stroke
reported,

I wanted to see color again, and when I did it was
fantastic! I saw colors I could never explain. A shadeof red that I will never forget.
A woman who was unresponsive after a
motorcycle accident said,

I was taken to a beautiful meadow with the mostgorgeous plant life and colors so vibrant that I’ve
never seen anywhere; it was amazing!

Leading NDE researcher Dr. Greyson is seeing
the same lucidity and higher level of consciousness in
the NDEs he studies as I am seeing in the NDERF
study. Dr. Greyson and his coresearchers say,
Near-death experiencers often describe their mental
processes during the NDE as remarkably clear andlucid and their sensory experiences as unusually vivid,
surpassing those of their normal waking state. An
analysis of 520 cases in our collection showed that 80
percent of experiencers described their thinking during
the NDE as “clearer than usual” or “as clear as usual.”
Furthermore, in our collection, people reported
enhanced mental functioning significantly more often
when they were actually physiologically close to deaththan when they were not.3

BEYOND NORMAL SENSES
Vision during NDEs is usually different from earthly
vision. An NDERF survey question asked, “Did yourvision differ in any way from your normal, everyday
vision (in any aspect, such as clarity, field of vision,colors, brightness, depth perception, degree ofsolidness/transparency of objects, etc.)?” Of the 613
NDErs responding, 66.1 percent answered “Yes,” 15.0
percent answered “Uncertain,” and only 18.9 percent
answered “No.” Hundreds of NDErs then provided anarrative explanation of how vision during their NDEs
differed from earthly vision. Review of these narratives
reveals that many NDErs describe vision as unworldly
in its brightness, clarity, and vividness. Very few
NDErs described their NDE vision as diminished in

comparison to their earthly vision.
Many NDErs indicate they have 360-degree
vision during their experience, sometimes even morethan that. The term 360 degrees refers to twodimensions only, while NDErs often report spherical,
three-dimensional visual awareness simultaneously inall directions—forward, backward, right, left, above,and below.
For example, a child we’ll call Ray was horsing
around on a school playground. His friend wanted toshow him a new judo throw. Ray was thrown and was
knocked senseless when he landed on his head. He
could see simultaneously in all directions. As herecounted the event,I still had a “body,” but it was entirely different. I could
see in three dimensions as if I had no body at all but
was just a floating eyeball, for lack of a better
explanation. I could see all directions at once, yetthere were no directions or dimensions as we think ofthem.
People who have had near-death experiences
often describe enhanced and even supernormal vision.
This is powerful evidence that something other than thephysical brain is responsible for vision during NDEs.
We will explore this concept further in chapter 5 when
we examine visual NDEs in the blind, including thoseblind from birth.
The sense of hearing during a near-deathexperience may be different from everyday hearing,but to a lesser degree than noted with vision. The

NDERF survey asked NDErs, “Did your hearing differ
in any way from your normal, everyday hearing (in any
aspect, such as clarity, ability to recognize source ofsound, pitch, loudness, etc.)?” To this question 46.0
percent of NDErs answered “Yes,” 22.2 percent
answered “Uncertain,” and 31.8 percent answered“No.” Many went on to describe what they meant.
One such description came from Mark, a young
man who was found to have an obstructed artery in hisheart. The cardiologist tried to insert a device called astent into the artery, but a complication developed
requiring emergency surgery. While recovering fromsurgery, Mark’s weakened heart stopped.
As the doctors worked feverishly to bring him
back, Mark took a journey down “the most beautiful
road I have ever seen,” one that took him through amountain paradise. As he took a walk through thisheavenly place, Mark began to hear a voice that
seemed to be “from nowhere, yet everywhere.”“Mark! You must go back!”“Go back? No! No! I can’t go back!”
Again the voice said, “You must return; I havegiven you [a] task; you have not finished.”“No, no, please, God, no! Let me stay.”
With lightning speed, I was naked moving
backward through the darkest of darkness. There
were lightning bolts all about me, from my feet to the
top of my head. Enormous lightning bolts! Going inall directions into the darkness. Despite thebrightness of the lightning, the light from it did not
penetrate the awful darkness.

Mark recovered. Later, when he described his
experience for the NDERF website, Mark indicatedthat of all the sensory events of that day, one that stoodout was the unique clarity of the sound. As Mark said:

All sound was incredibly clear. The voice of theSupreme Being seemed to emanate from nowhere
but at the same time from everywhere. Words did notcome from the mouths of beings, but from the aura
around them.
Here are some other descriptions from NDErs
that emphasize the quality of sound during their NDEs:[I heard] sound, and it wasn’t like the sound we hear in
our ears. It didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere;
it was just there. It did not seem to be there becauseof vibration or wind or anything. I can’t describe it.
Clearer and crisper, as if in a chamber of silence
listening to whispers.
Superclear. I am slightly hard of hearing. During thattime I could hear everything. Superhearing would bea better term.
SOUNDS OF SILENCE

Before you assume that NDEs always produce astereophonic treat, consider this: the NDERF study
found that the absence of sound during a near-deathexperience is more common than prior research has
revealed. In our study, many NDErs experienced
noticeable silence during their NDE. And that silence
seems to be comforting for most who experience it.
One eloquent NDEr said,

I left my body to the wonderful sound of silence, pureloving, graceful silence.
Another respondent, Joseph, described anexperience that took place during an asthma attack
that was so severe his medications had no effect andhe began to thrash for breath. As Joseph told it:

I could feel myself thrashing, but it was this otherfeeling that I was most concerned about. There wasthis overwhelming feeling of energy coming over myentire body. I tried to fight it off with willpower, but it
kept coming stronger and stronger and stronger, andfinally I couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. I remember
thinking to myself, “I just can’t do it anymore.”
Then as soon as I thought it, pop! This stillness
came over me and my thoughts, [and] I wasn’t scaredanymore. It was insanely quiet, and I realized that I
was still there—and standing, no less (which was
impossible due to the fact that I [had] just collapsed
backward a few minutes earlier)—and then it dawned
on me that I had just passed on. Wow!

This profound lack of sound seems to have had adeep effect. Joseph wrote:

There was no sound at all. It was the most peacefulsilence I have ever experienced. Kind of like being
submerged in water, with no one else around to makea sound. Thick, thick silence.
The experience was not uncomfortable forJoseph; rather, it was like being in a “state of
meditation.” This intense silence, which Joseph links toa sense of peace, has carried over into his life. Now,says Joseph, he is much calmer and lowkey than
before his experience:

The things I got aggravated over in the past no longer
have the same effect. If I go into my memory, I seemto have the ability to feel it all over again at will.
All five of the human senses of seeing, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell have been described in NDEs.
Heightened senses, enhanced vision and hearing, andaccelerated consciousness are some of the mostdramatic aspects of NDEs. Clearly, these enhanced
senses are not in keeping with the clinical meaning of
unconscious or clinically dead. It is medicallyinexplicable for anyone to have a heightened sense of
consciousness while being at the brink of death. Theseexperiences are not dreams or illusory fragments ofmemory from a dying brain. Near-death experiences
are real. There are no other experiences of alteredconsciousness in which the experiences are so lucid,
consciousness is so enhanced, and the experiences
are so consistently ordered as in NDEs. The NDERF
study, and virtually every study published in this field,
shows this consistent pattern of heightened senses
and consciousness, which leads some to call theexperience a “lucid death.”4

SKEPTICS: NDERS MAY NOT BE NEAR DEATH
Still, there are those in the scientific community who
don’t believe that a lucid death takes place. Some ofthem feel that in prior near-death-experience studies
the definition of near death was too loose and that it
included those who are not physically near death.
Perhaps, the skeptics speculate, prior NDE studies
included many case studies of those who were not truly
near death. The lucid experiences would be explainedby the fact that these people did not really have a close
brush with death.
For the NDERF research we took these concerns
into consideration. The NDERF study included only
those people who reported an imminent, lifethreatening event at the time of their NDE. The NDERF
definition of such an event is very strict and includes
only events in which people are physicallycompromised to the extent that death would be
imminent without a change in their physical condition.
Generally speaking, the individual reports being sophysically compromised that they are unconscious andoften clinically dead. Anyone who does not fit thisdefinition is not included in our study.
One of the more common skeptical “explanations”
of NDE has been hypoxia. Hypoxia means reduced
oxygen levels in the blood and the tissues of the body,
including the brain. Hypoxia may occur in a variety ofconditions including cardiac arrest and other lifethreatening events that result in loss of consciousness.
Most doctors are quite familiar with the symptoms ofhypoxia, which may include headaches, confusion,
memory loss, and fatigue. As hypoxia worsens, it may
result in increasing confusion and finallyunconsciousness. If you have ever found yourself
extremely short of breath for any reason, you may haveexperienced some of the symptoms of hypoxia. If so,unless your hypoxia was so severe that it was a lifethreatening event, I am sure what you experienced had
nothing in common with the elements of a near-deathexperience. Near-death experiences almost never
have confused memories that are typical of theexperience of hypoxia. The fact that highly lucid andorganized near-death experiences occur at a time ofsevere hypoxia is further evidence of the extraordinary
and inexplicable state of consciousness that typicallyoccurs during NDEs.

RESPONDING TO THE “OPRAH FACTOR”
Another appropriate concern from the skeptics iswhether the content of people’s reported NDEs isinfluenced by how much they know about NDEs at thetime of their experience. Some of the more cleverresearchers call this the “Oprah factor” because of thegreat job Oprah Winfrey’s television show has done toincrease knowledge of NDEs.
The skeptics’ reasoning goes like this: If the NDEr
is aware of NDEs at the time of their own experience,
will that affect what they share about their own
experience later?
Before the 1975 publication of Dr. Raymond
Moody’s book Life After Life there would have been no
possibility of this happening because the generalpublic did not yet know the specific elements of the
NDE.
Still, as a skeptic in my own right, I conducted astudy to see if the Oprah factor had indeed affected
what NDErs share. The study was a simple one. I
compared responses to twenty-one survey questions
in our first NDERF survey from people whose NDEs
occurred before 1975 with people whose NDEs
occurred after 1975.5
To tell you the truth, the results surprised me. The
same NDE elements occurred in the pre-1975 groupas in the post-1975 group. What is more, the sameelements took place with the same frequency. This
study strongly suggests that the content of NDEs is not
influenced by prior knowledge of NDEs.
Another and even more convincing study was
conducted by Geena Athappilly, MD, and associates
in 2006. She reviewed twenty-four NDEs that wereshared and recorded prior to 1975, before NDE waspublicly known, with a matched group of twenty-four
accounts shared after 1975. Her study found that the
NDEs from these two different time periods differed
only in that NDEs recorded after 1975 showed more
frequent description of a tunnel. The authors
concluded: “These data challenge the hypothesis thatnear-death experience accounts are substantiallyinfluenced by prevailing cultural models.”6
The Oprah factor was also addressed by the
NDERF survey question “Did you have any knowledgeof near-death experience (NDE) prior to yourexperience?” Of all NDErs surveyed, 66.4 percent
responded “No,” which I felt was a surprisingly highpercentage.

STANDARD LOGIC DOES NOT APPLY
I have looked at thousands of case studies filled withsolid evidence of a lucid death. The only conclusion I
can come to is that consciousness leaves the body atdeath.
I know this means that standard logic does not
apply—that death might not really mean a final deathas we have come to know it. That is why this chapter istitled “Lucid Death.” I believe that having a vivid andconscious experience at the time of clinical death isamong the best evidence available to suggest a
conscious existence after bodily death. It presents oneof the strongest lines of evidence of the afterlife.

4
PROOF #2: OUT OF BODY

In order to experience everyday spirituality, we need toremember that we are spiritual beings spending some timein a human body.

—Barbara De Angelis
An out-of-body experience (OBE) is the first element inmany near-death experiences. In the way we havedefined it here, out of body means “the separation of
consciousness from the physical body.” Describing itin such a mild way seems almost too tame. Those whohave OBEs may report that when they are in a state of
unconsciousness and often have no pulse they are still
able to see earthly, everyday events. People having
OBEs may see their own unconscious body as well as
the frantic activity of medical personnel who are trying
to revive them.
Approximately half of all NDEs have an OBE thatinvolves seeing or hearing earthly events. Usually the
point of consciousness rises above the body. If aceiling is present, consciousness usually does not rise
above the ceiling, at least initially, and is commonlydescribed as residing up in a corner of the room. It is
uncommon for the point of consciousness to be at thesame level as the body, and only rarely does the pointof consciousness move to a location below the body.
Out-of-body experiences have been reported tooccur spontaneously, when there is no associated lifethreatening event. The term out-of-body experience asused in this book refers only to OBEs that occur during
NDEs.
Here is an example of an OBE from a man who
nearly died from a complication after surgery. As his
medical team worked frantically to save his life, hewatched from above:

Suddenly my consciousness rose above [my bed in]
the ICU. I remember having told myself that I had not
had an out-of-body experience so this could not be
happening. As I rose, I told myself, “Well, here it is.”The suggestion that OBEs exist may be very
difficult for some to accept. This is understandable.
Consciousness that exists separately from the physicalbody is an event that few people have experienced.
Before accepting OBEs as factual, reasonable people
may require extremely strong evidence for its reality.
Such evidence is certainly available, as we shall see.

EXTRABODY VISION
The first large study of out-of-body experiences
occurring during near-death experiences was
published in 1982 by cardiologist Michael Sabom,MD.1 He was intrigued by anecdotal reports that hehad heard from other doctors. He devised a study inwhich he interviewed thirty-two NDErs who had out-ofbody experiences during their NDEs. Most of these
NDErs underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation(CPR) at the time of their brush with death.
As part of this study, Sabom interviewed twentyfive “seasoned cardiac patients” who did not have
NDEs during their cardiac crises. These twenty-fivepatients served as a control group in the study. Bothgroups were then asked to describe their own
resuscitations.
Sabom found that the NDErs with out-of-bodyexperiences were far more precise than those in thecontrol group in accurately describing theirresuscitations. In short, the results of this study wereconsistent with NDErs’ claims that they actually did
witness their own resuscitation in the out-of-body state.
A study similar to Sabom’s was published in 2004
by Penny Sartori, PhD.2 She interviewed fifteen NDErs
and found that eight of them had experienced beingout of body. Like Sabom, she asked the OBErs to
describe their own resuscitation efforts and compared
their responses to a control group in which the patients
had undergone resuscitation but did not have an outof-body experience.
Sartori found that several NDErs in this study
provided remarkably accurate accounts in their out-ofbody observations. The control group was highly
inaccurate. Several NDErs were inaccurate in theirobservations, though this might be attributable toeffects on their memory by medications administered
to sedate them following resuscitation. Many in thecontrol group could only guess at what had taken placeor describe what they knew of resuscitation fromtelevision. This study is further evidence that those whohave out-of-body experiences may indeed bewitnessing their own resuscitation at a time when they
are clinically dead.
Janice Holden, PhD, a professor of counseling at
the University of North Texas, conducted anotherimportant study of OBEs.3 Holden compiled all of theout-of-body accounts in all of the scholarly books andarticles published about NDEs. Only accounts where
the NDErs later sought to verify the accuracy of their
OBE observations were included in the Holden study.
This ambitious effort yielded eighty-nine case reports
involving observations of earthly, everyday events bypeople who reported being out of body. An additional
fourteen case reports involved observations during the
NDE of “nonmaterial, nonphysical phenomena” that
could be verified by later earthly observations. Fourcase reports in this study included both types of NDE
observations.
Holden was a stickler for accuracy in this study.
She considered the OBErs’ “earthly observation” to beinaccurate if even one detail of the observations wasfound to be inaccurate during later investigations. So if
NDE observations were fully 99 percent accurate, the1 percent that was inaccurate would lead the NDE
observations overall to be labeled as inaccurate in thisstudy. Even with such strict criteria, the study found that
92 percent of the NDErs had observations of earthly,
everyday events that seemed completely accurate,with no error whatsoever as verified by investigations
after the NDE.
One of my favorite out-of-body stories comes froman NDE reported by Kimberly Clark Sharp, a noted
NDE researcher in Seattle, Washington. 4 In 1984

Sharp reported a case study in which a woman named
Maria was rushed to the hospital with a severe heart
attack. After successful resuscitation, Maria told Sharp
about her near-death experience, including detailed
out-of-body observations of her resuscitation. Then
she went one step beyond. Her consciousness passed
outside the hospital, she said, where she observed atennis shoe on the third-story window ledge of thehospital. Maria provided detailed information about theshoe. It was a man’s shoe, she said, left-footed anddark blue with a wear mark over the little toe and ashoelace tucked under the heel.
Being the dedicated researcher that she is, Sharp
went window to window on the hospital’s third floor
looking on the ledges. Finally she found the shoe,
exactly as Maria had described it. This account stands
as remarkably evidential in spite of the efforts of someskeptics to cast doubts.5
Another widely quoted experience of OBE
perception was reported by Pim van Lommel, MD, andpublished in The Lancet, one of the world’s mostprestigious medical journals.6 The patient suffered a
cardiac arrest and was not breathing. At the time that atube was being placed in the airway to ventilate him, it
was noted he had upper dentures. The dentures were
removed and placed in a crash-cart drawer while thepatient was deeply comatose. Over a week later thepatient reported having an OBE and accurately
described the room he was resuscitated in and thepeople present. Remarkably, he declared that his lostdentures could be found in the crash-cart drawer. Notethat the patient reported seeing the nurse and thosepresent during his resuscitation, which doesn’t occur
unless someone is lucid and in an out-of-body state.

STUDYING HUNDREDS OF OBES AT NDERF
The NDERF study uncovered hundreds of accounts of
NDEs that included out-of-body experiences. I havestudied them in a way similar to the previously
discussed Holden study, but with some importantdifferences. For the out-of-body experience study, I
personally reviewed 617 sequentially shared NDEs
that were posted on NDERF. All near-deathexperiences meeting the study criteria that wereshared on the NDERF questionnaire form from
October 10, 2004, to October 10, 2008, werereviewed. The study criteria were that the near-deathexperience accounts be shared by the individual who
personally had the NDE, describe a single NDE, andbe shared in English, plus we needed to be allowed topost the NDE on the NDERF website. My goal was tosee if there were any out-of-body observations ofearthly events that either the NDErs or I considered tob e not realistic. If any unrealistic out-of-bodyobservations were found, the NDE would be classified
as unrealistic.
A questionnaire was prepared for the study ofseveral elements of the near-death experiences,including OBEs. In my review of these 617 near-deathexperiences, the first question I answered was: “Didthey see or hear any earthly events at a time theirconsciousness seemed separated from their physicalbody?”
If the answer to that question was “Yes,” twoadditional questions were asked: “Did the [NDEr] later[after the experience] investigate the accuracy of theearthly events they saw or heard during theirexperience at the time their consciousness seemed
separated from their physical body?” The second
question asked was: “Is there any reason to doubt…
that any of the earthly events seen or heard at the time
their consciousness seemed separated from their
physical body were real?”
For each of the preceding survey questions I
selected responses that ranged from a definite “Yes”
to a definite “No.”The results of the study are astonishing. Of the
617 near-death-experience accounts, 287 (46.5
percent) described OBEs that contained observationsof earthly events that would allow others to objectively
assess the reality of their observations. Of this groupof 287 OBErs, 280 (97.6 percent) were found to have
had out-of-body experiences that were entirely
realistic and lacked any content that was unrealistic.
Finally, of the 287 OBErs, 65 (23 percent) of theOBErs described personally investigating theaccuracy of their own OBE observations following their
NDE. None of these 65 OBErs described any
inaccuracy in their OBE observations based on theirlater investigations.
These are amazing results, given that I would
count the out-of-body experience as unrealistic if any
part of the OBE did not seem real to either me or the
NDErs.

Amazing Findings
The finding that nearly all of the hundreds of OBErs’
observations of earthly events were realistic provides
some of the strongest evidence ever presented that
NDEs are real. The best evidence indicates that

NDErs really do experience a separation of
consciousness from their physical body. It is all themore remarkable that this is occurring at a time when
the NDErs are unconscious or clinically dead.
I can’t help but marvel at these findings. There isabsolutely no scientific or medical explanation for
consciousness existing apart from the body. The factthat OBErs report seeing and hearing at a time when
their physical eyes and ears are not functioning could
have profound implications for scientific thinking about
consciousness. The scientific community may now
need to wrestle with a profound question: What does itmean to experience sensory perception without theuse of the physical senses?
Many hundreds of NDEs that include out-of-bodyperception have been shared and posted on the
NDERF website. Here are some more examples:
Thaddeus, a physician, had a blood infection thatwas threatening his life. As he lay in an isolation roomat the hospital, suddenly his perspective changed:

Lying on my back. Awake. Suddenly I am looking
down at myself from the ceiling. My position isreversed; that is, my head is opposite to my feet on
the bed. I see myself very clearly. I have normal
vision. I am presented with making a decision. No
voice. Just “knowledge” that I have a choice. The
choice is stay or go. There is absolutely no value toeither choice, which surprises me…. A sense ofabsolute calm. I choose “stay.” Immediately I amback in my body.

In the summer of 1971 Diane was with her
husband in northern Georgia. They were rafting the
Chattahoochee River. She was with eight people in alarge raft when it flipped and she was held beneath therapids by the churning action of the water. Stuckbeneath the mighty force of the river, Diane ran out of
air, blacked out, and then had this remarkable
experience:

The next thing I knew I was a hundred feet above theriver, looking down at the raft stuck against the rocks
below. I saw the two men in the raft looking for me tocome out from underneath. I saw the other woman,
who had been in our raft, downstream, clinging to arock. I watched my husband and my teenage sister,
who had rafted without incident down the rapids
ahead of us, come running back up the hill to find out
why all the debris was floating down the river. We hadtaken everything out of their raft and put it into ours incase they flipped over, but they went down so easily,
we just jumped in to follow them down. From above, I
watched my husband climb onto a rock in the river.
He couldn’t hear what the two men still in the raft wereshouting to him over the roar of the water. He had no
idea where I was or what had happened, but he knew I
was missing. He looked as if he wanted to jump in totry to find me, and I suddenly found myself at hisside, trying to stop him because he wasn’t much of aswimmer and I knew there was no point. When I
reached out to stop him, my hand went right throughhim. I looked at my hand and thought, oh, my god,
I’m dead!

…The Being of Light told me it was my choice tostay or go but that there was more for me to do in thatlife and it wasn’t quite time for me to leave. Still
hesitating, I was told that if I chose to go back, I would
be given certain knowledge to take back with me toshare with others. After much discussion, I agreed togo back and suddenly found myself in front of a tall,cone-shaped building—so tall it seemed to go on
forever. I was told this was the Hall of Knowledge. I
entered the building and flew, spiraling upward,
through what appeared to be shelves of books, like ina library, many millions of books, and I flew throughthem all. When I reached the top, I burst through it
into a kaleidoscope of colors and, at the same time,
my head popped out of the water. I was downriverabout ten yards from the raft.
I immediately became aware of where I was andgrabbed for the nearest rock. I was able to pull myself
up, and I coughed up a lot of water. I was in a state ofshock but needed no medical attention. I don’t know
how long I was under the raft; no one was looking attheir watch at the time. It could have been three orfour minutes; it could have been ten. There was notime where I had been.
FUTURE STUDYAt this time there is a major ongoing study directed by
Sam Parnia, MD, principal investigator of the AWARE(AWAreness during REsuscitation) study. 7 AWARE
involves the collaboration of many major medical
centers around the world, and researchers hope toexamine some fifteen hundred survivors of cardiac
arrest. As the project name implies, researchers will
examine the awareness of patients at the time they areexperiencing a cardiac arrest. Pictures will be placedin hospital rooms in such a way that they are visible
only from the ceiling to determine if they can be seen
during the OBE. It will be several years before we haveresults from this study. Hopefully, this study will answer
many further questions about OBEs during NDEs.
There have been several prior studies wheretargets were placed in areas of hospitals where
critically ill patients might have NDEs. These targets
were paper or computer screens with visual pictures orwords. Targets were usually placed in a location where
the patient, and those caring for the patient, would not
ordinarily see them. Designers of these studies hopedthat patients having an out-of-body experience during
an NDE would be able to see the targets and thus
provide objective proof of the OBE. So far there havebeen few NDEs and even fewer OBEs in thesestudies. None of the OBEs in these studies everincluded visual perception directed toward the target.
Personally, I think it is extremely important tocontinue with this type of research. Not only does it
contribute to an understanding of our physical andmental processes, it may also contribute to ourunderstanding of the spiritual world. I am convincedthat studying out-of-body experiences in a variety ofways will lead to a clearer understanding of the special
state of consciousness consistently described in
NDEs.

WHAT THE SKEPTICS SAY

Some skeptics think that out-of-body experiences are
simply fragments of memory that pop up as a person
begins to die. They suggest that these fragments ofmemory might arise from what the near-deathexperiencer was able to hear or feel during the time ofapparent unconsciousness. This argument alsosuggests that out-of-body experiences may be unreal
reconstructions of partial memories from the time the
NDEr is losing consciousness before the NDE orrecovering consciousness immediately after the NDE.
That some corroboration of the OBE observations withactual events or objects is found, they say, could bejust lucky guesses.
The NDERF study shows that this argument iswrong. A review of 287 OBE accounts reveals thatthey are fully realistic, without any apparent error, in
97.6 percent of the cases. If OBEs were unreal
fragments of memory or lucky guesses, it isunbelievable that there would be such a highpercentage of completely accurate OBE observations
in hundreds of NDEs.
Research says that memories formed just before
or after a period of cardiac arrest, if they occur at all,are marked by confusion.8 By contrast, NDEs containconfused memories only rarely. If any part of the NDE
were due to simple reconstruction of memory
fragments, such memories would be expected to
become progressively more or less confused as theNDErapproachedor
recoveredfrom
unconsciousness. This is not what happens. Neardeath experiences are typically highly lucid frombeginning to end.
In the NDERF study we ask, “At what time during
the experience were you at your highest level ofconsciousness and alertness?” People are invited torespond with a narrative answer. In reviewing hundredsof responses to this question, we have found that thehighest level of consciousness and alertness is usuallyexperienced not at the beginning or end of the NDE
but somewhere during or throughout the entire NDE.
Very few NDErs describe their highest level ofalertness as occurring when they approached or
recovered from their time of unconsciousness. This isfurther strong evidence that the OBEs that take place
during near-death experiences are real events, not justmemory fragments. In addition, NDERF researchshows people in an out-of-body state usuallyexperience a higher level of consciousness andalertness than they experience on a day-to-day basis
during their everyday life.

FAR FROM THEIR BODY
There is additional striking evidence that OBEs
occurring during near-death experiences are real. Thisevidence comes from the case studies of those NDErs
who say they have left their body and traveled somedistance from it, beyond the range of their physicalsenses. For instance, a patient whose body is being
resuscitated in the emergency room might find himself
or herself floating out of the room and into another partof the hospital. Later, the person is able to recountaccurate observations about what was taking place far
from the physical body. Many case reports describing
this have been published over the years by NDE
researchers.9 In the previously presented NDERF
study of OBE, there were ten OBE observations ofearthly events that were clearly far from the physicalbody and beyond any possible bodily sensory
awareness. All ten of these OBE observations wereentirely realistic.
Out-of-body experiences containing observations
far removed from the body are as realistic as the morecommon OBEs involving observations of events
happening close to the physical body. This example
comes from a doctor in India. He made an electricalcalling device, but it malfunctioned and he waselectrocuted. He was able to see through the walls of
his house and saw his father approaching his body. He
was able to see details on the roof tiles far above hisbody:

I rose to about ten feet off the ground, and I stopped,
hovering near the roof tiles. I could see the letters
written on the roof tiles from very near, almost a few
inches. Each letter appeared very big to me.
As a physician, I am startled by such experiences.
Even now, after encountering hundreds of out-of-bodyaccounts, I am still sometimes amazed to think that ourconsciousness may know no bounds.

TRY THIS AT HOME
Still, there may be some who are not yet convincedthat OBEs are an authentic phenomenon. Are you stilla doubter? Try this experiment: Close your eyes forfive minutes in a public place, staying as aware as
possible of ongoing events during this time. Have
another person there with you who is seeing andhearing events. At the end of five minutes, compare
your impressions of the five minutes with the person
accompanying you. Even though you were fully alert
and trying to be aware of ongoing events, I can guessthat your impressions will contain significant
inaccuracies—far more than those found in the out-ofbody experiences of the subjects in the NDERF study.

5
PROOF #3: BLIND SIGHT

Seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.

—Dennis Waitley
In 1998 Kenneth Ring, PhD, and Sharon Cooper, MA,
published a landmark article in the Journal of NearDeath Studies about blind people who have vividly
visual near-death experiences or out-of-bodyexperiences not associated with NDEs.1 An especiallyinteresting subgroup in this study was made up ofcase reports from individuals who were born totally
blind and had NDEs with the typical elements,
including detailed visual content. It is medicallyinexplicable that a person blind either at birth or shortly
after birth would have an organized visual NDE.
One such example is the story of Vicki, who saw
for the first time in her life during her near-deathexperience, as documented in Ring and Cooper’sbook, Mindsight. She was blind from shortly after birth
because of damage to her optic nerves as a result ofreceiving too much oxygen in an incubator. Vicki had
two near-death experiences. One was at age twelve
due to complications of appendicitis, and the second
was at age twenty-two following a serious car

accident. The first time in her life that she was able tosee was during her first near-death experience when
she had an OBE. According to Vicki, the content ofboth near-death experiences was similar, but the NDE
following the car accident was more vivid and detailed.
Thus, I will present details of her second near-deathexperience, which occurred after she sustained
trauma, including head injuries, so severe that she wasstill recovering from the accident a year later. As her
near-death experience began, she was in “stunned
awe” above her body in the emergency room, watching
the medical personnel trying to save her. After she
calmed down, she had a very detailed and highly visual
NDE that included visiting a beautiful unearthly realm,
encountering deceased friends, and a life review. She
reported her reaction to seeing herself:
I knew it was me…. I was pretty thin then. I was quitetall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it
was a body, but I didn’t even know that it was mine
initially. Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling,and I thought, “Well, that’s kind of weird. What am I
doing up here?” I thought, “Well, this must be me. Am I
dead?”…I just briefly saw this body, and…I knew that it
was mine because I wasn’t in mine.2
Vicki was married and wearing rings, but ofcourse had never seen them. Here are herrecollections of her rings:
I think I was wearing the plain gold band on my rightring finger and my father’s wedding ring next to it. But

my wedding ring I definitely saw…. That was the one I
noticed the most because it’s unusual. It has orange
blossoms on the corners of it.3
What is so remarkable about Vicki’s recollectionof these visual impressions is that she had neverbefore understood the concept of vision. “This was,”she said, “the only time I could ever relate to seeing
and to what light was, because I experienced it.”4

MIRACLE VISION
I have interviewed Vicki myself, and I find her story to
be remarkable. For those born blind, sight is an
abstract concept. They understand the world only fromtheir senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
Occasionally, blind people with certain correctableconditions are able to regain their vision throughsurgical procedures. When blind people acquire sight,
there is often a prolonged period of time in which they
have trouble making sense of visual perceptions. This
contrasts with Vicki, who was immediately aware ofher visual perceptions during her NDE. This further
suggests that Vicki’s vision was not of physical origin.
Studies have shown that the dreams of those born
blind do not include vision. Vision cannot be effectively
explained to those born blind, even by drawing
analogies to the four remaining senses they possess. I
tried this in conversations with Vicki and was
unsuccessful.
Being blind from birth and suddenly being able tosee at the point of death must be both beautiful andfrustrating at the same time. A number of the subjects

in Ring and Cooper’s study tried to explain exactly
what they had experienced. Some backed away fromsaying the experience was visual because they truly
didn’t know what a visual experience was. After
thinking about it, one man declared that his experience
was a form of synthesis, which in this case meant a
combination of all of his senses to form a newexperience. Here is how the subject described it in
Ring and Cooper’s book, Mindsight:
I think what it was that was happening here was abunch of synesthesia, where all these perceptions
were being blended into some image in my mind, youknow, the visual, the tactile, all the input that I had. I
can’t literally say I really saw anything, but yet I wasaware of what was going on, and perceiving all that in
my mind…. But I don’t remember detail. That’s why I
say I’m loath to describe it as a visual.5
Another of Ring’s subjects went on to say that his
visual NDE went beyond the visual:
What I’m saying is I was more aware. I don’t know if it’s
through sight that I was aware…. I’m not sure. All I
know is…somehow I was aware of information orthings that were going on that I wouldn’t normally beable to pick up through seeing…. That’s why I’m being
very careful how I’m wording it, ’cause I’m not sure
where it came from. I would say to you I have a feelingit didn’t come from seeing, and yet I’m not sure.6

After considering the stories told to him by theseblind subjects, Ring and Cooper came to a conclusionthat seemed to take all sides of the argument into
consideration:
Even if we cannot assert that the blind see in theseexperiences in any straightforward way, we still have toreckon with the fact—and it does seem to be a fact—that they nevertheless do have access to a kind of
expanded super-sensory awareness that may in itself
not be explicable by normal means…. Perhaps, as wehave suggested, even if these reports may not in theend represent an analogue of retinal vision as such,they clearly represent something that must be directly
addressed….
Indeed, what we appear to have here is adistinctive state of consciousness, which we would liketo call transcendental awareness, or mindsight.7
I agree with Ring and Cooper. Visual NDEs that
happen to the blind appear to involve an unearthly formof visual experience. There is no medical explanation
for anyone born blind to have such a visual NDE. Yet
blind people who have near-death experiences may
immediately have full and clear vision. This is further
evidence that vision in NDEs, including near-deathexperiences in those who are not blind, is unlike
ordinary, physical vision.
NDERF has received several near-deathaccounts from individuals with significant visual
impairment or even legal blindness. An example of anear-death experience occurring in an individual withlegal blindness comes from Violet. She was having

severe bleeding during childbirth, and the doctor
thought they had lost her. Violet had an out-of-bodyexperience, and her vision was remarkably clear:

Everything was very bright and sharp. I am legally
blind without my glasses, but the nurse took myglasses before they took me to the delivery room, but
I could see clearly what the doctor was doing.
BETTER VISION NEAR DEATH
By studying such a huge volume of near-deathexperiences, we have received a constant stream ofanswers to questions we have about NDEs and theafterlife. But studying NDEs may be mystifying as well.
For every answer we receive, sometimes several otherquestions present themselves. And one of the big
questions for me is: Why—how—can a blind person
see during a near-death experience? Add to that
another question: What does it mean that a blind
person can see during an NDE?
Let me start by considering that first question.
Describing vision in the blind as “unearthly” is not acomplete answer. There is a transcendental aspect tomuch in NDE research that remains mysterious.
Researching NDEs requires different methodology
than is used for most other scientific research. Neardeath experiences cannot be reproduced in alaboratory. We cannot wire people with sensitive
medical equipment and give them near-deathexperiences. That would be medically unethical. One
thing that we can do is collect and study large numbers
of NDE case studies and look for evidence regardingthe possibility of an afterlife. That is what we havedone with the NDERF study.
But by doing this, we have encountered manyquestions for which we don’t yet have complete
answers. Why the blind can see during an NDE is oneof them. Although we don’t have a complete answer,
we do have enough data that I can offer some
speculation.
It is medically inexplicable for someone born blind
to have a detailed and organized visual experience.
Another piece of evidence comes from nonblind neardeath experiencers who frequently describe unearthly
visual ability—360-degree vision, for example. People
who have near-death experiences are generally
unconscious, and their normal physiologic ability to
see is not functioning during their NDEs. All this points
to the conclusion that vision described during NDEs isdifferent from earthly vision, which is so familiar to us.
Vision in the afterlife may be somewhat analogous toearthly vision but very different in that it is more vivid,
comprehensive, and nonphysical.
All five senses associated with earthly life (seeing,
hearing, touch, taste, and smell) have been reported in
the NDERF case studies. It is without question that
NDErs often describe increased function in all of thesesenses at a time when they should have no sensory
function at all. Of all these senses, vision is often
described as being very different from ordinary,
everyday vision.
The NDERF survey asked NDErs, “Did yourvision differ in any way from your normal, everyday
vision (in any aspect, such as clarity, field of vision,colors, brightness, depth perception, degree ofsolidness/transparency of objects, etc.)?” Of therespondents, 66.1 percent answered “Yes,” 15.0
percent answered “Uncertain,” and only 18.9 percent
answered “No.” Near-death experiencers wereencouraged to provide a narrative response to thisquestion. Here are some of their replies:

My vision was greatly increased. I was able to see
things as close or as far as I needed. There was no
strain involved; it was almost like auto-zooming acamera. If I felt I needed to see something I justlooked at it, no thought or strain required.
When I was floating above my body, I could see 360
degrees around me at the same time. But I only
seemed to focus on a smaller visible area similar to
my normal physical vision.
It was like watching high-definition TV, as compared
to normal: all people and things were vivid; there wasno darkness or shadows.
Clarity, bright lights. Looking back, I had perfecteyesight (I am terribly nearsighted); everything was
solid.
Vision was blurry in sedation; when I was having theheart attack vision became clear, as my thoughts
also did.

I was short-[near]sighted, but at that moment myvision was 100 percent, and…everything was superclear and crisp and all colors were brilliant.
Having no material body, I was sensing, seeing,
feeling, on another plane. It is like trying to explain
the colors of the rainbow to a blind person.
Hundreds of such descriptions of vision during
NDEs have been collected at NDERF. Descriptions ofvision during NDE are often so dramatic that I have toremind myself that the NDErs are generally
unconscious and often clinically dead at the time they
are experiencing this extraordinary level of vision. Yetover the years, hundreds of NDE accounts have been
submitted to NDERF that commonly describe
supernormal vision, accelerated consciousness,realistic out-of-body observations, and many otherelements that take place while the NDErs areunconscious or clinically dead.
Understanding what happens during near-deathexperiences, including the vision described, has
required me to consider what I would have thought
unthinkable early in my medical career: perhaps
NDErs are actually describing another real,transcendental realm of existence. Perhaps the rules
we all thought we knew about consciousness andsensory perception need to be reconsidered.

SEEING IS BELIEVINGThis takes us back to the second question that the
research has posed to me, namely: What does it meanthat a blind person can see during an NDE?
I had never even thought of this as a question until
I took my son Phillip to a meeting in Seattle where ablind woman talked about her NDE. Phillip was nine
years old at the time, and I thought he would be boredwith the presentation. But his response was quite thecontrary. Her presentation held his rapt attention.
When the lecture was over, we walked quietly to thecar. I could tell something was on Phillip’s mind, so I
said nothing, inspiring him to fill the dead air.
Finally Phillip spoke. “If blind people can see
during a near-death experience, then the experiencemust not be caused by brain chemistry,” he said. “Theexperience must be real!”It’s thinking like this that puts blind sight high on
my list of evidence for the afterlife.

6
PROOF #4: IMPOSSIBLY CONSCIOUS

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness,
which unites your body to your thoughts.

—Thich Nhat Hanh
Some near-death experiences take place while apatient is undergoing surgery and has been
anesthetized. It may seem that a discussion of NDEs
occurring while under general anesthesia belongs withthe discussion of NDEs and unconsciousness.
However, as we will see, there is a great difference
between unconsciousness caused by generalanesthetic and that caused by trauma or serious
illness.
The proper use of general anesthetic leads to acontrolled, total unconsciousness. The term generalanesthesia, according to Merriam-Webster, means“anesthesia affecting the entire body andaccompanied by loss of consciousness.” When
anestheticiscorrectly
administered,theanesthesiologist knows that the patient has noconscious awareness of his or her surroundings.
Essentially, the patient is dead to the world. The term
anesthesia may refer to either local or generalanesthesia. The term anesthesia in this chapter willrefer only to general anesthesia.
According to textbooks on the subject, generalanesthesia is intended to bring about five states during
surgery:
Pain relief
Loss of memory of the procedure, commonly known
as amnesia
Loss of consciousness
Motionlessness
Reduced autonomic nerve responses, meaning
reduced heart rate, slower breathing, or lower-thannormal blood pressure
In order to properly care for a patient who isundergoing anesthesia, the anesthesiologist connects
the patient to a variety of monitors to observe heartand breathing rate and blood gases. Anesthesia
involves intensive efforts to make certain that loss of
consciousness and a state of amnesia are achieved
and maintained. Yet many near-death experiences arereported by patients who almost died while under thiscarefully monitored blanket of anesthesia.
What life-threatening events can occur underanesthesia? Sometimes these patients are alreadynear death from a life-threatening illness or injury
requiring emergency surgery and they suffer a heart
attack, or perhaps they are allergic to the medications
given. Or the surgery may have complications and thepatient is exposed to a near-death situation.
I have been surprised at the large number ofpatients who can recount vivid NDEs during

anesthesia. The high level of awareness expressed inthese case studies is further strong evidence of anonearthly state of consciousness during NDEs thateven anesthesia cannot dampen.

FIVE CASE STUDIES: NDEs THAT TOOK PLACEUNDER ANESTHESIA
Jaime was undergoing surgery when the tube that wasinserted for his breathing became clogged. The
doctors later told him that he had been “code blue” andhad to have defibrillator paddles applied to beresuscitated. Here is what happened.

Now, all I remember was being anesthetized. The
next thing I [knew], I [was] still on my back. At first it
seemed like there was nothingness, like I was on myback afloat, and it was pitch-dark, a very scarydarkness. I remember I kept putting my hands in frontof my face; I could not see them or my body, but I
knew that they were there. Then I start hearing this low
hummmm, and it was like being underwater, likewhen you are under and you can hear noise and it’smuffled, that kind of thing. Anyway, I was wondering
why it was so dark. Nothing else mattered. I could notremember anything prior to this—not the surgery,anything. It was like this was the only thing I could
think of.
I then noticed that while it was pitch-dark, it felt as
if I was in a tunnel, and all along the tunnel were
doorways, but the whole tunnel I could sense was
like…a cave—sort of rocky, not too rocky but kind of

smooth—at least that’s my impression of it.
So then I am feeling a little more afraid, like,what’s going on here? It felt like I was like that for anhour. Just there, then, I could see a pinpoint of whitelight in front of me in the distance, the size of a pencil
eraser head—that size. So I sense that I start moving
in that direction,…like something [is] pulling me
there; I don’t feel as if I [am] doing it. At this point I was
like floating [in an] upright position, then going slowly
toward that pinpoint of light. And then I knew that there[were] little doorways all along this tunnel, and I felt
that…if I wanted to, [I could] go into any of thosedoorways, and I felt at the time that if I did, I would notcome back, but my attention was on the light.
In an instant, I thought, “Grandma,” and I was
instantly in the light. I kept saying, “You’re not dead. I
am not dead, you’re not dead.” She said, “No, I am
not, and you are not either.” My grandmother had
died three years prior, but at that moment I could notremember that, just that she was not dead and that
she was so alive and well. She had died of dementia
complications. She invited me to sit and have coffee
like we used to all the time at her house. Her table
was there, the chairs. She looked like she did when
she was in her thirties. She had on a purple dress,
like a nice one she had with flowers on it, except thatthe flowers seemed to glow a fluorescent yellow.
Then I noticed that there was a fluorescent lightthat emanated from the top of the room, and I started
feeling so good-like. I can’t describe it—love, or likethe first time you kiss. Electricity. Butterflies in yourstomach, like the best drug. I don’t know how to
describe it, it felt so good.

I then kind of got a little panicky ’cause I noticed
that there was no light source; it was just there. That’s
when she touched my hand, [and] I noticed that I
looked down and could see my hand also. It wasthere, but it looked white, almost fluorescent, and she
told me that it was all right. (All this conversation wasin Spanish, by the way.) And she said, let’s drink thecoffee. I did. But I notice[d] that it was not hot and hadno taste. It was lukewarm, but yet there was steam
coming from it, like it was hot but was not. It’s likewhen you are sick and there’s no taste.
Anyway, I tell her that we [the family] think of her
every day. She stated that she knew. She knew that
we loved her very much and she loved us.
And then I noticed that the room was domelike,that in one section, the left side of that domed room,
was like a curtain, and I saw my grandfather on mymom’s side peek through, and I [saw] another lady,
heavyset, short, with a long black ponytail. I wanted tosay something, and that is when my grandmother toldme, “You have to go; you can’t stay here; it’s not yourtime.”I then felt terrible; I started to cry. I told her, “But,Grandma, I want to stay here.” It felt so wonderful I did
not want to leave. I remember begging in Spanish,“Please, I want to stay with you. I never want to leave
here.”She said, “You will be back here when it’s yourtime; don’t worry.” Then she said, “Tell everyone I
love them and think of them all the time.”
At this point I was still saying, “But, but I wanna
stay,” and then I heard this loud pop. It felt like I washit in the chest with a sledgehammer made of fire. I
remember coming to and gagging. I was on life
support—all the tubes, etc. I felt terrible. I noticed mydad was there and the rest of the family. I don’t
remember what happened next, but I do remember
telling him that I needed a paper. I had to write
something: “I seen Grandma.”
Cyndi was having a second heart valve
replacement surgery within six months when she had
the experience she described below. She asked her
doctor if it was possible to dream during surgery.
When he said no, she replied, “Then we have to talk.”
Here is a paraphrase of what she experienced.

During my surgery I felt myself lift from my body andgo above the operating table. The doctor told melater that they had kept my heart open and stopped
for a long time, and they had a great amount ofdifficulty getting my heart started again. That musthave been when I left my body because I could see
the doctors nervously trying to get my heart going. It
was strange to be so detached from my physicalbody. I was curious about what they were doing but
not concerned. Then, as I drifted farther away, I saw
my father at the head of the table. He looked up atme, which did give me a surprise because he had
been dead now for almost a year.
Valerie was seventeen years old and undergoing
surgery. During the operation her heart stopped. Hereis her experience:

Sometime during surgery I went through a tunnel.
Parts of my life passed me by. I had closed my eyestight; I remember someone saying, open your eyes. I
was in a pure white space and could see rooms withspirits walking around. I started to cry, but no tears. I
remember looking at my hands, and they weretranslucent. Then an angel appeared; she had sucha radiant glow to her beauty to behold. She comforted
me, telling me I was safe. I remember telling her I
wasn’t ready to die. She said she knew that. Then she
pointed down, and I could see the doctors doing CPR
on a little girl. Not really understanding that was me, I
watched my whole operation, CPR and all. I told herthat was so sad, she looks so young. Then she said
they are bringing her back, and I felt like I was pushed
and thrown back into that painful body.
Patricia was scheduled for a two-hour surgery to
remove her gallbladder. The surgery lasted eight
hours, and her heart stopped twice:

The next thing I knew, I heard the doctor yelling andthe nurses running around. I looked to my right andsaw the doctor beating on my chest, but all I could do
was stand there until I saw a light on the wall. It looked
like a flashlight that grew bigger, and I touched it andwas taken into a tunnel with clouds spinning androlling around. The clouds were gray, white, andsmoky somewhat. I was gliding very fast with my arms
just dangling. When I got to the end the light turnedorange and there [was a] very tall man dressed in [a]tan work outfit (shirt & pants). I look[ed] pas[t] him,and I could see yellow flowers and a large mountainand a blue sky. His face was the color of light sand,and his hair was golden tan. He had the kindest lookin his eyes. I could hear the silence and see thetrees, and I wanted to run in, but he stopped me. He
tilted me backwards and sent me back through thetunnel with a gentle push, at which time I heard thedoctor say, we got her. There was no pain when I wasback in my body, only a fullness of some sort aroundmy chest and stomach.
Christopher was being treated surgically for aserious heart disease. He was under partial
anesthesia, called “conscious sedation.” He washeavily sedated and had a heart attack. Christopher
describes how he became more conscious after hisheart attack, a seemingly impossible occurrence:

I recently found out that I have Wolff-Parkinson-White
Syndrome/heart disease, which causes sudden
death at any moment because of the extra [electrical]
pathway in the heart. The only way to fix this heartdisease is by ablation, which is surgery where thesurgeon removes the extra [electrical] pathway in theheart. I was under a conscious sedation. I felt sedated
to the point where I did not know what was happening
to me, but there was a moment when I went into V

tach [ventricular tachycardia], where the heart speeds
up so fast it causes a heart attack. Even under thesedation I felt a small amount of pain, but when myheart started going into V tach, a peace came overme. I became fully aware of my surroundings. I could
feel the shell of my body, and my spirit began to rise;
an extreme peace came over me. As my spirit began
to rise, the doctor shocked me and then again, andmy spirit stopped and went back into my body, and[my] state of mind went back to being sedated. I felt
complete peace, no worries about anything, and it
was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
LUCID YET UNCONSCIOUS
In prior chapters I presented the responses to survey
questions from the NDERF study of 613 NDErs, allwith NDE Scale scores of 7 and higher. To compare
the content of NDEs occurring under generalanesthesia to all other NDEs, I used this same groupof 613 NDErs.
This study included twenty-three NDErs who
described their experiences as having occurred while
under general anesthesia. Many of these accounts
described a cardiac arrest as the associated lifethreatening event while under general anesthesia.
These NDEs occurring under general anesthesia
were compared to the remaining 590 NDEs in the
NDERF study by reviewing the responses of bothgroups to thirty-three survey questions that asked
about NDE content. We compared the responses tothese thirty-three questions between the two groups
using a statistical tool called chi-square. Due to thelarge number of questions asked about the content of
the NDE, the responses between the two groups wereconsidered different only if there was a statisticallydetermined less than 1 in 100 chance that thedifferences in responses could be due to chance. A
trend toward a statistically significant difference wasdefined as a 3 in 100 chance that the differences in
responses between the two groups could be due tochance.
The results: there were no significant differencesin the responses to any of the thirty-three survey
questions between the two groups, with the exception
thatanesthesia-associatedNDEs
reportedencountering a tunnel more often. Near-deathexperiences described as occurring under generalanesthesia had all the NDE elements as those notoccurring under general anesthesia. Remarkably, NDE
elements appear to occur with the same frequency,with the exception of a tunnel experience, regardlessof whether or not the NDEr was under generalanesthesia at the time of their experience.
If consciousness were only a product of thephysical brain, then it would make sense that NDEs
under general anesthesia would have lessconsciousness and alertness during their experiences
than other NDEs, right? This is certainly what would be
expected, but it is not what the NDERF study found. An
NDERF survey question asks, “How did your highest
level of consciousness and alertness during theexperience compare to your normal everyday
consciousness and alertness?” For the NDEs
described as occurring under general anesthesia, 83
percent of the respondents answered “Moreconsciousness and alertness than normal” to thisquestion, compared to 74 percent for all other NDEs.
The responses to this question by the two groups were
not statistically significantly different.
These are incredible results! Either generalanesthesia alone or cardiac arrest alone produces
unconsciousness with no possibility of a lucid memory.
Recall our prior discussion that ten to twenty seconds
after a cardiac arrest the EEG, a measure of brain
electrical activity, goes flat, indicating no measurable
electrical brain activity. The occurrence of typical
NDEs under general anesthesia is thus doubly
medically inexplicable. The finding that typical NDEs
occur while under general anesthesia is among thestrongest evidence yet presented that consciousness
can exist apart from the body.
Other NDE researchers have reported NDEs thattake place while under general anesthesia. Bruce
Greyson, MD, at the University of Virginia, states, “In
our collection of NDEs, 127 out of 578 NDE cases (22percent) occurred under general anesthesia, and they
included such features as OBEs that involved
experiencers’ watching medical personnel working on
their bodies, an unusually bright or vivid light, meeting
deceased persons, and thoughts, memories, andsensations that were clearer than usual.”1

MATERIAL BEINGS WITH SOULS
Sir John Eccles was a Nobel Prize–winningneuroscientist who studied consciousness. He
proposed that consciousness may actually exist apartfrom the brain. Eccles once stated, “I maintain that thehuman mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientificreductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism
to account eventually for all of the spiritual world interms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must
be classed as a superstition…. We have to recognizethat we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a
spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies
and brains existing in a material world.”2

SKEPTICS: TOO LITTLE ANESTHESIA
There are skeptics, of course. And the ones speaking
out on this subject say that experiences like these canonly be the result of too little anesthesia being used,leading to partial consciousness during the operation.
To say this, of course, is to ignore NDEs resulting
from anesthetic overdose. And it also ignores the typeof experiences reported by patients who do actuallyawaken from anesthesia during surgery. Fortunately,
only 1 to 3 in 1,000 patients3 experience this“anesthetic awareness.”
Rather than the type of coherent NDEs you readhere, anesthetic awareness results in totally different
experiences.4 Those who experience anesthetic
awareness often report very unpleasant, painful, andfrightening experiences. Unlike NDEs, which are
predominantly visual experiences, this partial
awakening during anesthesia more often involves brief
and fragmented experiences that may involve hearing,
but usually not vision. I would emphasize that partial
awakening during anesthesia is very rare and should
not be a serious cause of worry about an anesthetic
procedure.
When near-death experiences occur duringgeneral anesthesia, there are often OBE observationsof the operation. During these out-of-body experienceobservations, NDErs typically see their own
resuscitation taking place on the operating table.
These near-death experiencers are not seeing
themselves with too little anesthesia; they are seeing
themselves coding. What the near-death experiencers
see confirms that their NDEs are occurring at the timeof a life-threatening event, usually a cardiac arrest.
Near-death experiences that occur during cardiac
arrest while under general anesthesia are perhaps thestrictest test of the possibility of consciousness
residing outside of the body. By conventional medical
thinking, neither a person under anesthesia nor aperson experiencing cardiac arrest should have aconscious experience like that of an NDE. Yet the
NDERF study found many that do.
Over twenty different “explanations” of near-deathexperience have been suggested by skeptics over theyears. If there were one or even several “explanations”
of NDE that were widely accepted as plausible by theskeptics, there would not be so many different“explanations.” The existence of so many
“explanations” suggests that there are not any“explanations” of NDE that the skeptics agree on asplausible.
A study by Kevin Nelson, MD, and colleagues
suggested a connection between REM intrusion and
NDEs.5 REM is an abbreviation for rapid eye
movement. REM commonly occurs as a normal part ofsleep, often in association with muscle paralysis. REM
sleep commonly includes bizarre and frightening
dream imagery. If REM occurs during a time of partial
or complete wakefulness, the imagery of these dreams

intruding into wakefulness is called REM intrusion. I
coauthored a response to Dr. Nelson’s paper in which
we pointed out that REM intrusion and NDEs are very
different experiences. In addition, REM intrusion
cannot explain near-death-experience content undercircumstances where REM intrusion should not be
possible, including NDEs in those blind from birth and
NDEs during general anesthesia.6
Neuroscientists like Eccles have suggested that
consciousness may separate from our material body. It
caused him to ponder not only the meaning of life, butalso exactly what we mean by the concept of death.
We know what happens to the corporeal body when it
expires, but what about the soul? It was a question he
was never able to answer to his full satisfaction, but henonetheless commented on it: “We can regard thedeath of the body and brain as dissolution of ourdualist existence,” said the Nobel Prize winner.
“Hopefully, the liberated soul will find another future ofeven deeper meaning and more entrancing
experiences, perhaps in some renewed embodied
existence.”7There is no explanation for NDEs occurring underanesthesia other than accepting that fullconsciousness can exist apart from the physical body.
For that reason, I consider them significant evidence of
the afterlife.

7
PROOF #5: PERFECT PLAYBACKLife is as tedious as a twice-told tale.

—William Shakespeare
We will next explore an especially interesting elementof near-death experience: the life review. What exactly
is a life review? There is no better way to answer thatquestion than to actually read one from the NDERF
study.
This is a life review from a young man namedMark. He was a passenger in a Jeep that lost control
on a snowy road near Lake Tahoe and slammed into atelephone pole. Mark was seriously injured as he wascrushed between the Jeep and telephone pole. As aresult of this traumatic accident, he had a full-blown
near-death experience, one that contained most of theelements outlined in the beginning of this book. One ofthose elements was a profound life review.
Before you read this, note that there are certain
elements common to profound life reviews. For
example, Mark sees real events from his life as though
they are scenes from a movie about himself. Many
near-death experiencers describe their life reviews
using terms like movie, and they are not bizarre dreamimages. He also has an empathic reaction to what heis reexperiencing. In essence, he is able to feel how hehas made others feel during certain events in his life.
He also comes to several conclusions about his life
and about life itself.
The self-knowledge that Mark gained through his
NDE helped give him direction so that he madeimportant changes in the rest of his life. Mark now
thinks about death differently. As he wrote on his
NDERF survey form: “All life ends in death…. It is not
to be feared…. Was it Peter Pan who said, ‘To die isthe greatest adventure’? You will all take this trip. At
the moment of death let go of the fear and enjoy the
ride.”
Here is Mark’s life review:

It is unclear how we started, only that the result of thisfirst message was for me to begin a series of feelings
about my life. It was the proverbial “life flashing
before my eyes” or life review, as I have since heard it
called. I would describe this as a long series offeelings based on numerous actions in my life. The
difference was that not only did I experience thefeelings again, but I had some sort of empathetic
sense of the feelings of those around me who wereaffected by my actions. In other words, I also felt what
others felt about my life. The most overwhelming ofthese feelings came from my mother.
I was adopted as an infant. I had been somewhat
of a troublemaker. I sometimes hurt other children
when smaller and had taken to drug and alcoholabuse, stealing, crazy driving, bad grades,
vandalism, cruelty to my sister, cruelty to animals—

the list goes on and on. All of these actions wererelived in a nutshell, with the associated feelings ofboth myself and the parties involved. But the mostprofound was a strange sense coming from mymother. I could feel how she felt to hear of my death.
She was heartbroken and in great pain, but it was all
mixed up with feelings of how much trouble I had
been in. I got a sense that it was such a tragedy tohave had this life end so soon, having never reallydone much good.
This feeling left me with a sense of having
unfinished business in life. The grief that I felt frommy mother and friends was intense. In spite of mytroubled life, I had many friends, some of whom wereclose. I was well known if not popular, and I could
sense many things said about my life and death. The
sense of my mother’s grief was overwhelming.
CHANCE TO CHANGE
Life reviews like Mark’s are among the mosttransformative and powerful aspects of the near-deathexperience. Because of its very nature—sometimes athree-dimensional, panoramic review of everything
significant in the NDEr’s life—the life review isconsidered a condensed form of healing
psychotherapy. “One-minute psychotherapy,” as Dr.
Raymond Moody has called it.1
At the very least, life reviews contain fragments of
the NDEr’s earthly life. Generally speaking, NDErs
who have life reviews view themselves from a thirdperson perspective. They watch themselves interacting

with the people in their lives. They see how theytreated others and often step into the other person’splace so they know how that person felt wheninteracting with them. As you can imagine, this can bepleasant or unpleasant depending upon the level ofkindness involved. A kind act would result in the NDEr
feeling the kindness doled out to the other person,
while an unkind act would result in feeling theunkindness.
A spiritual being sometimes accompanies the
person who is having the life review. This being may
serve as a kind of loving guide, assessing the life
review from a higher spiritual plane as the NDEr
watches, discussing the spiritual ramifications of theevents of the NDEr’s life. The being’s comments mayhelp the NDEr put his or her life into perspective. Neardeath experiencers almost never describe feelingnegatively judged by this spiritual being, no matter how
unkind they were up to that point in their lives. Neardeath experiencers who reviewed many of their own
prior cruel actions often express great relief that they
were not negatively judged during their NDEs.
When playwright George Kaufman said, “You
can’t take it with you,” he was obviously referring tomaterial things. Many near-death-experience
researchers have noted that one of the life review’s
main lessons is that knowledge and love are twoelements that we take with us when we die. As a result,life reviews are often one of the most transformative
elements of the NDE. Those who have powerful life
reviews tend to revere both knowledge and love after
their NDE.
Many NDErs say that the life review, of all theelements of the NDE, was by far the greatest catalyst

for change. A life review allows NDErs to relive theirown lives, mistakes and all. It also gives them achance to evaluate themselves on their life
performance. Many things that seemed insignificant at
the time—a small kindness, for instance—turn out tobe significant in their own or another person’s life.
People realize they became angry over things thatwere not important or that they placed too muchsignificance on unimportant things.
Here are two more examples of life reviews fromNDERF:
Roger was returning from Quebec City with afriend when they lost control of the car they were
driving and slammed head-on into another vehicle.
Roger immediately left his body and saw from above
the events that were swirling around the accident
scene. Then, said Roger,

I went into a dark place with nothing around me, but I
wasn’t scared. It was really peaceful there. I thenbegan to see my whole life unfolding before me like afilm projected on a screen, from babyhood to adultlife. It was so real! I was looking at myself, but better
than a 3-D movie as I was also capable of sensing
the feelings of the persons I had interacted withthrough the years. I could feel the good and bademotions I made them go through. I was also capableof seeing that the better I made them feel, and thebetter the emotions they had because of me, [themore] credit (karma) [I would accumulate] and thatthe bad [emotions] would take some of it back…justlike in a bank account, but here it was like a karma
account to my knowledge.

Linda made a medication mistake. Thinking she
was supposed to take eight tablets at once rather thaneight over the course of a day, as prescribed by her
doctor, Linda passed out on her bed and then passed
over.
What I find interesting about this NDE resulting
from an accidental overdose is the strong elements of
empathy it contains. As you can see, Linda’s life
review is filled with a message of karma:

I saw everything from birth till then in fast motion.
Also, while this was happening I could feel the
feelings of these events. I could also feel any pain I
gave out to others. I also felt the goodness I’d givenout. God asked if I was happy with how things went,and I said yes. He asked me how I felt, and I said I
was a little nervous. He explained that this was
because all my life I felt this way and it is sort of why I
didn’t handle [life] properly. I was also told that if thebad outweighed the good you [are] left with the bad.
So if you were a truly awful person, you’d be feelingquite awful for your time there. Alternately, if you havegiven out love and goodness and been kind andcaring, you’d be up there feeling sheer bliss andgood. I was feeling no extreme sense of badness, forlack of a better word. I was feeling happy, light,
carefree but a little nervous inside, like I’d been overa hill too fast or ridden a roller-coaster. But all in all,the balance seemed fair and just enough for what I
had just been shown. Mostly good stuff had

outweighed the bad.
IMPORTANCE OF REVIEWA study of life reviews was one of the earliest NDERF
research projects.2 This study was conducted by Jody
Long, who serves as the NDERF webmaster. She
confirmed the importance of the life review in the
NDEr’s life by reviewing 319 NDEs from people who
submitted NDERF case studies. Jody reviewed theirnarrative responses from the original NDERF survey’s
question about the life review: “Did you experience a
review of past events in your life?”
The answers to these life review questions werestudied. Here they are, along with the results:

How life review happened: Almost 26 percent
described how the life review occurred. Many
described it as like a rerun of a play or film or likewatching it on a screen.
Content of life review: More than 21 percent
commented on the content of the life review. Neardeath experiencers generally noted that they were theones who judged themselves. During the process
they saw the good and bad, the cause and effect of
their choices. Many reported that they had a review offeelings rather than a review of visual events. Somesay that their review consisted of feeling others’
reactions to their earthly actions.
The life review helps the NDEr understand his or
her purpose in life. And it is this understanding aboutwho they are that helps them make significant lifechanges. Here are a few examples of what NDErs
experienced during their life reviews.

While in the light I had a life review and saw
everything I…ever did in my life; every thought, word,deed, action, inaction was shown to me.
The review was very fast, but I seemed tocomprehend everything easily despite the speed.
At that moment, I’m not sure exactly when, someone
or something began giving me an examination of
conscience, and in the blink of an eye images frommy life began passing before me, beginning with mychildhood. Each image had its counterpart, or as if
the actions of my life were being put into a balance.
Everything I ever thought, did, said, hated, helped,
did not help, should have helped was shown in frontof me, the crowd of hundreds, and everyone like [in] amovie. How mean I’d been to people, how I could
have helped them, how mean I was (unintentionallyalso) to animals! Yes! Even the animals had had
feelings. It was horrible. I fell on my face in shame. I
saw how my acting, or not acting, rippled in effecttowards other people and their lives. It wasn’t until
then that I understood how each little decision or
choice affects the world. The sense of letting my
Savior down was too real. Strangely, even during thishorror, I felt a compassion, an acceptance of mylimitations by Jesus and the crowd of others.
All of a sudden in my mind from left to right like an
IMAX movie, I saw all the very important moments of
my life up to that present time. Most of the earlier
moments in my life…I had long forgotten about until
this happened. I had mixed feelings about this but
mostly was peaceful.
I saw my childhood and felt the emotions my actions
created in others. I learned that many of the things I
thought I did “wrong” were not necessarily wrong. I
also learned of opportunities to love others that I
passed up. I learned that no matter what has been
done to me, there is more to the story that my ego
might not see or understand. My life has [changed]
because I take into account more the feelings ofothers when I act.
If NDEs are real experiences, we should expectthat the events seen in life reviews really happenedeven if some of them were forgotten. Conversely, if
NDEs are not real, we can expect that there issignificant error in their content and perhaps evenhallucinatory features.
To explore the realness of the life review, NDERF
studied the reality of the content of life reviews in
NDEs. As part of this study, we looked for any content
in the narratives of life reviews that appeared to be
unrealistic. If unrealistic content was never or rarelyfound, we reasoned that the content of life reviews as awhole could be considered real.
To help determine the reality of the content of life
reviews, I studied the same 617 NDEs that werediscussed in chapter 4, where I reviewed these NDEs
to determine the accuracy of out-of-body observations.
For each NDE containing a life review, I asked, “Isthere any reason to doubt, for either you personally or
the experiencer, that any of the content of the scenesof [that person’s] past life was real?” If any part of thelife review appeared to contain observations thatappeared unrealistic to either me or the NDErs, thatcase was put into the “unreal” category.
A total of 617 NDEs were studied. A life review
was described in 88 NDEs (14 percent). The results ofthis study were convincing. None of the life reviews
contained content that was considered unrealistic,
either to the NDErs or to me.
People who had near-death experiences were
often impressed that their life review contained realdetails of their life that they had long forgotten. For
example, this man was sleeping in the backseat of acar when the driver slammed into the back of a truck.
He went from sleeping to traveling up to meet a clusterof beings. The way he describes it,

The sensation was of a piece of a metal being swept
into a magnet. The emotion was overwhelming, withincredible love associated with the magnetic effect. I
sensed I always knew them [the beings], but when I
came upon one being, I wasn’t sure who it was. I left
and returned to my body, which seemed as if I were
putting on soiled clothes.

He was then treated to a life review in which[e]verything in my life, including long-forgotten
details, made sense.
Lisa said about her life review:

The being of light knew everything about me. It knew
all I had ever thought, said, or done, and it showedme my whole life in a flash of an instant. I was shown
all of the details in my life, the one I’d already lived,
and all that was to come if I returned to earth. It was all
there at the same time, all the details of all the causeand-effect relations in my life, all that was good ornegative, all of the effects my life on earth had had onothers, and all of the effects the lives of others that
had touched me had had on me.
The NDERF study makes it clear that the events
seen in the NDEr’s life review are real. Our finding that
NDEs contain consistently realistic life reviews arefurther strong evidence for the reality of near-deathexperiences.

SKEPTICS: DEFENSE MECHANISM OR SHORTCIRCUIT
Skeptics have proposed alternative explanations forthe life reviews. The two main alternative explanationsare

1. the life review is a psychological defense
mechanism, and2. the life review results from the dying brain
producing electrical discharges in the part of thebrain responsible for memories.
Neither of these alternative explanations stands
up well under scrutiny.
Dr. Susan Blackmore, a leading NDE skeptic,
attributed the life review to a psychological defense
mechanism at the time of a life-threatening event thatinvolves a retreat into a timeless moment of pleasant,prior memories.3 The explanation seems plausible
until one begins encountering NDE memories that are
not pleasant. Such content would not be expected if
the life review were simply a pleasurable psychologicalescape from unpleasant circumstances.
Many NDEs have been reported in which the lifethreatening event was sudden, unexpected, andoccurred with immediate unconsciousness, such as anunanticipated car crash. The NDEs would haveunconsciousness occur so rapidly that a psychologicaldefense mechanism would not have time to develop.
And then there are NDEs and subsequent life
reviews that take place under general anesthesia. No
theory can explain NDEs that occur under generalanesthesia because the NDErs should perceivenothing.
The second suggestion from skeptics is that thelife review is only a product of a dying brain, one that is

producing electrical discharges in the brain’s memory
centers. Writing in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer,
Blackmore wrote: “The experience of seeing excerpts
from your life flash before you is not really as
mysterious as it first seems. It has long been known
that stimulation of cells in the temporal lobe of the brain
can produce instant experiences that seem like thereliving of memories. Also, temporal-lobe epilepsy can
produce similar experiences, and such seizures caninvolve other limbic structures in the brain, such as theamygdala and hippocampus, which are also
associated with memory.”4Is this really true? Let’s first look at the claim that
stimulation of the brain can produce prior memories
similar to life reviews in NDEs or any other element ofnear-death experiences. “Stimulation” of the brain
refers to electrical stimulation of the brain, which may
be done as part of a specialized neurosurgicalprocedure. The brain has no sensory pain nerves in it,so the procedure is generally painless. The brain
electrical stimulation studies of neurosurgeon Dr.
Wilder Penfield are often quoted by skeptics asreproducing many of the elements of near-deathexperiences, including life reviews. Noted NDE
researcher Dr. Emily Williams Kelly and her
coresearchers, Bruce Greyson, MD, and Edward F.
Kelly, PhD, reviewed Dr. Penfield’s published reportsof electrical brain stimulation and found the following:
Most of the experiences Penfield reported in fact bore
little resemblance to actual NDEs. They consisted ofhearing bits of music or singing, seeing isolated andrepetitive scenes that seemed familiar and may[emphasis added] have been fragmentary memories,
hearing voices, experiencing fear or other negative
emotions, or seeing bizarre imagery that was often
described as dream-like.5
There have been others who reported theexperiences of their patients undergoing procedures
similar to those used by Dr. Penfield, including
electrical stimulation of the brain’s temporal lobes.
Drs. Kelly, Greyson, and Kelly, commenting on thesefurther studies of electrical brain stimulation, continue:
Subsequent studies have found similar experimental
phenomena, especially fear or anxiety andfragmented, distorted experiences quite unlike NDE
phenomenology.6
More recent studies by Dr. Olaf Blanke andassociates suggest that they were able to produce
OBE-type experiences with electrical brain
stimulation.7, 8 The first patient they reported
described a purported OBE that involved seeing
herself from above, but only her lower trunk and legs.
She reported visual distortions, which included seeing
her legs getting shorter and moving toward her face.
This type of OBE with partial body visualization andhallucinatory features is essentially never reported inout-of-body experiences occurring during near-deathexperiences. I coauthored a paper that documented
other discrepancies between the Blanke account andtrue OBEs.9
Blackmore and other skeptics have claimed that

seizures, especially those associated with temporallobe epilepsy, can produce experiences similar to life
reviews or other NDE elements. However, theevidence indicates this is not true. As neurologist Dr.
Ernst Rodin stated,
In spite of having seen hundreds of patients withtemporal lobe seizures during three decades ofprofessional life, I have never come across thatsymptomatology [of NDEs] as part of a seizure.10
Other researchers have documented that theexperiences produced by electrical brain stimulation or
seizures are almost always unlike any element of neardeath experiences.11 At NDERF we have case reports
from epileptics who had frequent seizures but no neardeath experience until an exceptionally severe seizure
became a life-threatening event.
The best evidence points to the conclusion thatelectrical brain stimulation and seizures do notconsistently reproduce any elements of NDE. The
skeptical argument that NDEs are somehow related toelectrical brain stimulation or seizures needs to be
relegated to the status of urban legend.
Accurate and transformative life reviews are ahallmark of NDEs, and they point to a reality beyond
what we know from our earthly existence. They provide
important evidence for the reality of an afterlife.

8
PROOF #6: FAMILY REUNION

Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a typeof heaven.

—Tryon Edwards
Many near-death experiencers describe dramatic andjoyous reunions with people known to them who diedlong before their near-death experience took place.

“COME HERE; HERE IS GOOD TO BE”
One such story came from a Finnish woman named
Anitta, who had a heart attack. Anitta found herself
zooming up a tunnel toward a bright light. “Someone”
took her by the arm and made her feel peaceful.
Anitta’s life came back to her “like a film.” As Anitta
recounted on the NDERF site:

Then I saw my father, just like he was when he lived,
and he said to me, “Come here; here is good to be.” I
wanted to run to him, but I could not because there
was a border between us. I cannot describe theborder. It was like a wall that I could see through.

Then I heard a dark voice that seemed to be
everywhere, asking, “Who?” They meant my identity.
And then [came] the words: “not yet.”…Then I was obliged to turn back, which I did notwant, because I had such a good feeling there. Again
I was in the tunnel, coming back very fast, and at thesame time the pain in my body came back. I had
cried, “No, no,” when I was coming back to
consciousness. For many days afterward I had astrange feeling, [like,] where am I? And I missed myfather a lot, whom I had seen.
WHY SEEING IS BELIEVINGThis NDEr, Anitta, had an experience that isrepresentative of those in the NDERF study who
encountered deceased relatives or friends during theirnear-death experience.
Why should seeing deceased friends or relatives
be evidence of life after death? Because if NDEs were
only a product of brain function, then one would expectthat beings encountered during the NDE would be
those most recently familiar to the NDEr. In otherwords, one would expect NDErs would most likely see
people recalled from recent memory, such as the
emergency personnel who helped them or the bankteller they had made a transaction with right before
being hit by a car. Instead, they see friends andrelatives who have died, in many cases people they
haven’t thought about in years or even decades.
The percentage of deceased individuals seen
during NDEs, especially deceased blood relatives, is
so high that I believe that encounters with deceased

loved ones are not the random products of afrightened, confused, or dying brain but instead are astrong line of evidence for the reality of near-deathexperiences.
A study that best illustrates this was conducted in2001 by Emily Williams Kelly, PhD, of the departmentof psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia.1
She compared 74 NDErs who had encounters with thedeceased during their NDE with 200 NDErs who did
not have awareness of deceased individuals.
The Kelly study found that 95 percent of thedeceased individuals encountered were relatives,
while only 5 percent were friends or acquaintances.
Only 4 percent of the NDErs in the study met beings
who were alive at the time of the NDE. Other studies
have shown that in dreams or hallucinations, thebeings encountered are much more likely to be people
who are still living.
As part of the NDERF study, I reviewed NDEs that
described meeting individuals known to the NDErs
from their earthly life. For this part of the study, I
reviewed the same group of 617 NDEs that we
discussed in chapters 4 and 7. This review excluded
living people seen by the NDErs only during out-ofbody observations of earthly events, and familiar
beings seen only during life reviews.
In our study group, 97 NDEs, or 16 percent,described meeting one or more beings familiar tothem from their earthly life. Of these 97 NDEs, 13 were
excluded from further analysis because the beings who
were met were not described as being either alive or
deceased at the time of the NDEs. Most of theseexcluded NDEs described grandparents and, lesscommonly, parents. With this information, and from thecontext of the NDE narratives, it is likely that the great
majority, and possibly all, of the beings encountered inthese 13 NDEs were deceased at the time of the
NDEs. There were 84 NDEs where the beings
encountered were described as being either alive or
deceased at the time of the NDEs. Of these 84 NDEs,
there were only 3 (4 percent) where the beings
encountered were definitely alive at the time of the
NDEs. In all 3 of these NDEs, only one being known to
the NDErs from their earthly life was present. Two ofthese beings were their fathers, and one was a doctor.
This remarkably low percentage of living beings
encountered during the NDE is consistent with thefindings of the Kelly study and is additional strong
evidence for the reality of NDEs and the existence ofan afterlife.
In the study group of 617 NDEs, there were 91
NDEs that described meeting beings familiar to themfrom their earthly life that also indicated whether thesebeings were direct family relatives or friends. Of these91 NDEs, 74 (81 percent) encountered only relatives
and 7 (8 percent) encountered both relatives andfriends. The finding of a preponderance of deceased
relatives during NDEs is similar to what Kelly found in
her study.

“TALKING IN TELEPATHY”
One of the more remarkable NDEs shared with
NDERF involving encounters with deceased relatives
came from Brian, who was born totally deaf. At the ageof thirteen he nearly drowned. Here is Brian’s
description of meeting his deceased family members.

I approached the boundary. No explanation wasnecessary for me to understand, at the age of ten,that once I cross[ed] the boundary, I could nevercome back—period. I was more than thrilled to cross.
I intended to cross, but my ancestors over anotherboundary caught my attention. They were talking in
telepathy, which caught my attention. I was born
profoundly deaf and had all hearing family members,
all of which knew sign language! I could read orcommunicate with about twenty ancestors of mineand others through telepathic methods. It
overwhelmed me. I could not believe how many
people I could telepathize with simultaneously.
Brian had been born totally deaf, so
communication could take place only through sign
language, lip-reading, or other visual forms ofcommunication. Brian’s amazing NDE involved
communication unlike any he had encountered—telepathy. It is this type of communication, by the way,that takes place during almost all near-deathexperiences in which communication is described. To
the best of my knowledge, Brian’s NDE is the first everreported from an individual born totally deaf.
Here are several more examples of those who
encountered the deceased during their NDEs. I am
including these other examples to show this element’s
remarkable consistency.
Christine was receiving chemotherapy forleukemia and was in her apartment. As a rare side
effect, one of the chemotherapy drugs caused herheartbeat to become dangerously erratic. As it did,she had the following experience:

The first scene I remember was that I was in myapartment bedroom (where my body lay). My ceilinglight was on, and my body lay near the right side of
my bed. I was on the left side of my bed, not up in the
air yet not on the ground either. I saw several people
kneeling down around my body, so I couldn’t reallyeven see myself. The people wore dark clothing, so
I’m assuming they were police. I think I saw one
person with a white shirt (EMT?). While I was watchingthe “event” I was with two of my deceased relatives:
my grandfather’s cousin, Aunt Kate (who was more
like a grandmother to me), and my uncle Harry. In
life, these were really the only two members of myfamily (besides my mother) that I was close to. I loved
them very, very much. I don’t remember any strong
emotion at all during the NDE. In fact, I felt almost
emotionally detached from what was going on. I was
not elated, I was not frightened or angry, etc. Just
peaceful, calm, and…accepting. But I “knew” why
Kate and Harry were there. I knew that they weregoing to take me somewhere.
Peter was six years old when he cut himself so
severely that he “bled to death.”

Then I looked to my left and saw my grandmotherwho had passed away when I was nine months old. I
also saw all of my deceased relatives with her,thousands of them. They were in translucent spiritform.
Bob fell out of a building and landed three stories
below. He suffered multiple injuries, including a brain
injury. During his NDE he met many deceased
relatives:

My relatives (all deceased) were there, all at theirprime in life. They were dressed, I would say, 1940s
style, which would have been prime years for most.
Relatives I knew of, such as my grandfathers, butnever knew in life were there, as well as uncles/aunts
who passed before I knew them.
At times NDErs encounter beings that they
believe to be alive at the time of their NDE, only to findthat they were actually deceased. Here’s an example
of what I am talking about. Douglas’s heart stopped,and he had to be defibrillated twelve times. Here’s hisstory:

Now while all this was happening, two hundred miles
away my grandfather had a heart attack at the sametime. We were both kept alive through the night, but
the next morning we both had heart attacks again. At
that time I had my NDE. There was no tunnel of lightthat I hear so much about; it was just an expanse ofwhite light.
Off in the distance to my right was what appeared

to be the shadow of a large oak tree with a large
group of people standing under it. As I got closer tothis group I recognized the people standing in thefront of the group as my grandmother, my great-uncle
Glenn, my great-aunt Lala, my great-aunt Wanda, herhusband, Lee, a woman that was like a grandmotherto my sister and me, and then a group of people that I
thought I knew but at that time I couldn’t put names totheir faces. I tried to speak to them, but all they would
say to me is “We’re not waiting for you; go home.”
Then the last thing I remember from that side
was my grandfather’s voice. I did not see him; I justheard his voice say, “You’re the luckiest boy I know.”
Then three days later I awoke in the hospital withmy mother and sister standing over my bed. My
mother says that my first question was about the play
I was working on at the time, and my second question
was about my grandfather…. My grandfather [had]died at the same time two hundred miles away.
For another example, when a child we will call
Sandra was five years old, she contracted encephalitis
and lost consciousness. It was then that she
encountered her neighbor. Here is a paraphrase of her
story, which she shared with the NDERF site:

As I was unconscious, an elderly family friend
appeared to me and said, “Go home right now.” I
didn’t really know what he meant. I was out of my bodywhen he appeared, and I immediately went back into
my body. Before long I opened my eyes, and myfamily was there smiling in their great relief that I had
returned from unconsciousness. When I told themthat I had seen our friend and that he insisted I go
home, they looked at me with great concern. The day
after I went into the hospital, our friend had died of aheart attack. I did not know he had died until after I
shared my experience with my parents.
Later during this same experience, Sandra
encountered a sister, one who had died before she
was born and that she didn’t know she had. A few days
after she came around, Sandra was drawing a pictureof the girl she had met during her coma. When she told
her parents what she was drawing, they became
ashen and left the room. Later they returned and told
her about the sister she never knew she had, who was
struck by a car and died before she was born.

JOYOUS AND YOUTHFULAs you may have noticed, encounters with thedeceased loved ones are almost always joyous
reunions, not horrifying ones like what might be seen ina ghost movie. Also, although many deceased loved
ones prior to death were elderly and sometimes
disfigured by arthritis or other chronic illnesses, thedeceased in the near-death experience are virtuallyalways the picture of perfect health and may appear
younger—even decades younger—than they did at thetime of death. Those who died as very young children
may appear older. But even if the deceased appear to
be a very different age than when they died, the NDEr

still recognizes them.
People may encounter in their near-deathexperience a being who seems familiar but whose
identity is unknown during the NDE. Later on, the NDEr
may discover the identity of this familiar but unknown
being, for instance, by looking at old family
photographs.2 Most of the time these unfamiliar beings
turn out to be family members from the past. We justsaw an example of this from Sandra, who encounteredduring her NDE a sister she did not know she had.
Here is another example from the NDERF site,
regarding a woman we’ll call Missy.
Missy suffered head trauma in an automobile
accident. Although she suffered loss of memory, Missy
remembers well going up a tunnel and seeing hersister. To paraphrase her story:

I saw a child that I recognized as a sister of mine
who had died in a fire. I was only a year or so when
she died, but I knew it was her. She had a strong
family resemblance. Much later, when I was older, I
confirmed it was my sister when I saw pictures of her
in the family photo album.
MYSTICAL BEINGS
Sometimes NDErs meet beings who are unfamiliar;
many such beings encountered by those in the NDERF
study had a mystical quality. Despite being unfamiliar,
these mystical beings were generally described asvery loving in their interaction with the NDErs. To thequestion, “Did you seem to encounter a mystical being

or presence?” NDErs responded with 49.9 percent
selecting “Definite being, or voice clearly of mystical orotherworldly origin,” while 9.8 percent selected“Unidentifiable voice,” and 40.3 percent selected“Neither.” Here are some examples of the mysticalbeings they encountered.
Jonathan was told he had only a 1 percent chanceof surviving surgery on his esophagus.

[I] remember standing about ten feet up and ten feetto the side of my body on the [operating] table. A
person was standing next to me, but I didn’t look at
him/her. I had no fear or questions to ask; I justobserved. Around the table were at least a dozen
nurses and doctors. But what was so emotional was
the presence of [glowing] people that I can only
describe as angels. Each angel was guiding thehands of the staff they were standing next to. I heard
no noise, no voices, no music. It was peacefully quiet.
I don’t remember details too specific, such as whattools were used or the exact position of my body, but
only because I was focused so much on the angels
guiding the staff in everything they did, from walking
to the use of the tools within my chest cavity. Even
after the operation, I still had an unusual peace andno fear. The doctor said it was the best operation hehad ever gone through—there were no problems at
all—and he was impressed at my rate of recovery.
Andrew suffered an allergic reaction that left him
unconscious. He wrote,I was aware of another person or being; it was
feminine, and she spoke to me. It was a feeling ofpresence, not really seeing. She told me everything
would be all right and that [when I thought about
having so much knowledge] I would know the secretsof the universe.
Jesse overdosed on a mixture of heroin andcocaine, calling it “an instant death.” During his NDE,I met this being filled with love, joy, patience,compassion who knew my thoughts and knew
everything I’ve ever done in this life and beyond! He
also knew and remembered who I am!
A man we’ll call Leonard had a heart attack. He
described 360-degree vision as he watched the frantic
efforts to resuscitate him:

On the other side communication is done via
telepathy (thought transfer). I must tell you that God
has a fantastic sense of humor; I never laughed somuch in all my life!
During a near-death experience, these mysticalbeings may be sensed or heard but not actually seen.
When mystical beings are seen, their appearance isvariable. Some in the NDERF study described thesebeings as angels. They usually don’t have wings.
Rather, they may appear similar to earthly beings, orthey may be described as beings of light, without
easily definable features.
Communication with these mystical beings, aswith known deceased beings, is almost always
telepathic. Mystical beings may be present at any time
during the NDE. They often are present at a time of
discussion near the end of the NDE.
The NDERF study’s conclusions—that NDErs see
deceased relatives and friends during their experience—is supported by Emily Williams Kelly’s previously
cited study. As noted, her research found that 95
percent of the deceased individuals encountered wererelatives, and only 5 percent were friends or
acquaintances. The age of the NDEr did not make any
difference in whether or not they encountered a
deceased being. If the deceased relatives
encountered during NDEs were only a product ofearthly memory, it would be expected that older
individuals, who would have experienced more deathsof people that they knew in their lifetimes, would
encounter more deceased relatives. However, this is
not what the Kelly study found.
It might also be expected that NDErs would
encounter deceased individuals that they were
emotionally close to. Once again, though, Kelly’s study
held a surprise. For 32 percent of the deceased
beings encountered, the NDErs were emotionallyneutral to or distant from the beings or had neverpreviously met them. The NDErs in the study frequently
commented that the individuals they encountered werecompletely unexpected.3“THE STARLIT STRIP”

No skeptic’s argument can explain the overwhelming
percentage of deceased beings encountered during
NDEs, especially given that living beings would bemuch more likely to occupy a place in the NDErs’
recent memory. People who undergo near-deathexperiences are generally not thinking about thedeceased at the time of their NDEs, anyway. Yet
people who died years or decades before arecommonly encountered. The skeptics’ suggestion that
NDErs expect to see these deceased beings cannot
explain NDEs in which the NDEr had never met thedeceased or did not even know the person was
deceased at the time of the NDE.
The findings of the NDERF study and others are
consistent with what NDErs themselves generally
believe: they are briefly reunited with deceased
relatives and friends when they venture to the otherside.
Reuniting with our lost loved ones is the reality—
not just the hope—of the NDE. As Mark Twain said,“Death is the starlit strip between the companionshipof yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.” It is theconvincing stories collected in the NDERF websitethat lead me to believe these reunions are real andstrong evidence of the afterlife.

9
PROOF #7: FROM THE MOUTHS OF
BABESLife, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as itruns.

—Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore
Skeptics have suggested that Oprah created the neardeath experience. They say this with tongue in cheek,of course (or so I think). What they are jokingly
suggesting is that Oprah and other cultural icons have
popularized the near-death experience to such a pointthat people claim to have NDEs when they really don’t.
It is hip to have NDEs, the skeptics claim, and people
will go to any length to fit into that category.
Frankly, fabricated NDEs are more rare than theskeptics would have you believe. I have run into fewer
than ten NDEs shared on the NDERF survey form thatwere definitely fabricated—out of 1,300 NDEs sharedwith NDERF. But still the skeptical questions remain:
Has our culture become so familiar with near-deathexperiences that people are now embellishing theirexperiences? Or, worse, are they creating them out ofwhole cloth?
The short answer to those questions is no. The

fact that NDEs have been the subject of many
television shows and a couple of feature films does notmean that people are now pretending to have NDEs.
Still there are skeptics. Carol Zaleski, a Harvardtrained theologian, describes NDEs as a product of“religious imagination.”1The Skeptic’s Dictionary says,“NDE stories are now known to a large audience.
Thus, when new stories are told about going into thelight, etc., one has to be concerned that these stories
may have been contaminated. They may reflect what
one has heard and what one expects.”2 And, at the far
end of skepticism come those who think that NDEs
are the work of Satan.
Personally, I think all of the above are wrong. If
asked why, I have many answers, and one of them is:“The children told me.”
It is through young children that we can help
determine if NDEs are just a made-up phenomenon.
And it’s through very young children that we can help
prove once and for all that NDEs are natural events,
not events made up or influenced to match sometelevision program.
Let’s look at some of the data from the NDERF
study to see how the NDEs of very young children
relate to the subject of NDEs overall. For the sake ofcategorizing, I call children five years of age andyounger “very young children.” Most five-year-olds have
not yet started elementary school, where cultural
influences are accelerated. A child of five or younger isless likely to have experienced the cultural influencesthat might affect how they interpret a near-deathexperience. Plus, very young children have lessdeveloped views of death than older children andadults. It is unlikely that very young children have heard

of near-death experiences or that they understandNDEs even if they have.
In essence, very young children are practically ablank slate when it comes to the subject of death,
which makes them an important subject group to use
when studying near-death experiences.
In prior chapters responses were presented tosurvey questions from the NDERF study of 613
NDErs, all with NDE Scale scores of 7 and higher. To
compare the content of NDEs of very young children toolder children and adults, I used this same group of
613 NDErs, minus 2 NDErs who did not give their age
at the time of their NDE on the NDERF survey. I used
the same methodology that was previously describedin chapter 6, where NDEs occurring under generalanesthesia were compared to all other NDEs.
This study included 26 NDErs age 5 and below(average age 3.6 years old) and 585 NDErs age 6
and above at the time of their NDEs. The survey
consisted of thirty-three questions that addressed thecontent of NDEs. We compared the responses tothese thirty-three questions between the two groups.
The results: Very young children had every NDE
element that older children and adults had. There wasno statistically significant difference in the responses
to any of the thirty-three survey questions regarding thecontent of the NDEs between very young children andolder children and adults. There were only twoquestions with a trend toward a statistically different
response between the two groups.
One of these questions was “Did time seem tospeed up?” There were three possible responses tothis question: “Everything seemed to be happening all
at once,” “Time seemed to go faster than usual,” and“Neither.” Very young children were somewhat more
likely to select the “Neither” option in response to thisquestion. However, there were no differences between
the two groups in response to the more generally
worded survey question “Did you have any sense ofaltered space or time?”
The other question with a trend toward astatistically significant difference in the responses
between the two groups was “Were your senses more
vivid than usual?” The three possible responses to thisquestion were “Incredibly more so,” “More so thanusual,” and “Neither.” Very young children were
somewhat more likely to select the “More so thanusual” option. However, there were no differences
between the two groups to three more specificallyworded questions that addressed their senses during
the NDEs. These three questions with no differencesin responses between the two groups asked “How did
your highest level of consciousness and alertness
during the experience compare to your normal
everyday consciousness and alertness?” and twoquestions asking if their vision and hearing during their
NDEs differed from everyday vision and hearing.
The conclusion: Very young children have every
NDE element that older children and adults have intheir NDEs. This group of 26 very young children, age
5 and below, appears to have NDE content that is
identical to that of older children and adult NDEs. The
percentage of time NDE elements occur during their
NDEs is not statistically different between the twogroups for any of the NDE elements. The twoquestions with only a trend toward statisticalsignificance are not corroborated by differences in
responses to other questions asking about the same

NDE elements.
Dr. Cherie Sutherland, a noted NDE researcher,reviewed thirty years of scholarly literature regarding
NDEs in children, including very young children. Here’s
what Dr. Sutherland has to say about NDEs in very
young children:
It has often been supposed that the NDEs of very
young children will have a content limited to their
vocabulary. However, it is now clear that the age ofchildren at the time of their NDE does not in any way
determine its complexity. Even prelinguistic children
have later reported quite complex experiences…. Agedoes not seem in any way to affect the content of the
NDE.3
I agree with Dr. Sutherland. The NDERF study is
by far the largest study of NDEs in very young children
ever published. We may now be more confident thanever in concluding that the content of NDEs in very
young children is not affected by their young age at thetime of their NDEs.4
There is much more to understanding near-deathexperiences than simply analyzing responses toquestions with statistics. There is no substitute forreading NDEs to see for yourself their deeper
dimension. I have read every NDE ever shared with
NDERF. In reading the NDEs of very young children, I
see that their thinking may be childlike during the NDE.
However, I also see a deeper dimension of their NDEs
that goes beyond even the very detailed NDERF
survey questions. There is a subjective similarity
between the NDEs of children of all ages and adults

that can only be appreciated by reading the accounts.
What about older children? Do they have thesame NDE content as adults? It is difficult to select theage that separates children from adults. Eighteen
years old is a legal definition of adulthood in many
countries. However, youth between the ages of sixteen
and eighteen are able to drive, often start employedjobs, and frequently begin romantic relationships. I
consider those between sixteen and eighteen years
old to be between childhood and adulthood rather thanto be children. With this consideration, I definedchildren to be younger than sixteen years old andadults to be age sixteen and older.
Using the same methodology I used to study thecontent of NDEs in the very young, the content of the
NDEs of 133 children and 478 adults were compared.
The results: The responses to the thirty-threequestions about NDE content were reviewed. There
was only one question that had a statistically different
response between the two groups. This question
asked, “Did you see a light?” Children were more likely
to answer “Yes” and less likely to answer “No.” Asimilarly worded question asked, “Did you see or feelsurrounded by a brilliant light?” Possible responses
included “Light clearly of mystical or otherworldly
origin,” “Unusually bright light,” and “Neither.” I believe
this latter question, one of the NDE Scale questions,better addresses the mystical, unearthly light that
NDErs often encounter. There was no statisticaldifference between children and adults in their
response to this question.
The conclusion: This group of 133 children, age
fifteen and below, appears to have NDE content that is
identical to that of adult NDEs. Considering the abovediscussion, there does not appear to be any statisticaldifference between the two groups in the percentageof occurrence of each NDE element during their
NDEs.
As with the NDEs in very young children, this is
the largest study ever published that directly compares
the content of childhood and adult NDEs. I coauthoreda book chapter that included a review of thirty years ofscholarly research on childhood NDEs. That chapter
was written before we had the results available fromthe NDERF study of childhood NDEs. From priorpublished scholarly literature, we could still conclude:
Over the first three decades of NDE research,
investigators have published findings on several
hundred childhood NDEs. NDEs in children appear tobe accurately remembered, even if shared years laterin adulthood. The contents of children’s NDEs appear
similar to those of adults and do not appear to be
substantially affected by age.5
The NDEs of children, even very young children,
have the same content as adult NDEs. This strongly
suggests that NDEs are not significantly influenced bypreexisting cultural influences, beliefs, or life
experiences. This is further powerful evidence that
NDEs, and their consistent indication of an afterlife,
are real.
Below are several case studies from very young
children (five years old and younger) and children overfive. Note their similarity.

CHILDREN’S NDES
Five-year-old Paul was returning home from getting his
school uniform tailored when he dashed into the roadand was struck by a passing van:

I jumped from the Jeep and ran to cross the road toreach home first. What I remember is something
coming beside me (later I knew it was a van). What I
really remember is just [taking] one or two steps into
the road before something happened…. I felt like ahydrogen balloon floating in the air. I was going
upward. I slowly opened my eyes, and I saw my bodylying on the roadside. I got really frightened. I felt…
paralyzed and I was going upward, but I felt…
someone was carrying me very lovingly (anunconditional love). I tried to move my body andturned my eyes upward to see who was carrying me.
What I saw was Mother Mary. She wore a blue andpink dress with a crown…. I felt very comfortable inher hands.
When she was eleven years old Jennifer was in asevere car accident. She saw her “limp and lifelessbody” below. The voice of a spiritual being told her she
was needed back at the accident site to help theunconscious driver. Here is her experience as she
wrote it:

Then the voice said, “His nose is cut off his face; youwill need to go back and help him; he is bleeding todeath.” I said, “No, let somebody else do it. He will befine without my help. I do not want to go back down
there. No!” The voice said, “I will tell you what to do.
You take off his shirt after you pick his nose up off thefloorboard of the car. It will be next to your feet and his
right foot. Place his nose on his face, pressing down
to stop the bleeding. It’s just blood, so do not be
afraid. I am with you as always.” (I knew I was neveralone from as far back as I could remember.) “So
then, Jennifer, you will begin to walk him up the rightside of the road, and a car will come. Tell the man totake you to the nearest hospital. Keep the man calm,
and lead him to the hospital where you were born.
You know the way and everything will be all right. You
must do this. Understand?”Jennifer goes on to say that when she returned toher body everything happened as she was told by thespiritual being. A car stopped and carried them to thehospital where she was born. She was able to calm
both the anxious driver and the accident victim wholost his nose. And there was a happy ending: a skingraft was used to reattach the nose with “barely ascratch left to notice.” The astonished emergency
room doctor said, “I cannot explain what kind of
miracle I just witnessed in this emergency room today.”

AGELESS CONSISTENCY
I want to be the first to point out that many of thechildren’s NDEs you just read were reported many
years or even decades after they took place. Skeptics

may say that children are not likely to remember NDEs
that happened so long ago and therefore are not able
to accurately report what truly happened.
William Serdahely, PhD, addressed theseskeptical concerns. Serdahely, a health sciences
professor from Montana State University, comparedfive NDEs reported by children with five NDEs that
occurred in childhood and were reported years later
when the NDErs were adults. He analyzed the reports
by comparing forty-seven characteristics of NDEs
between the two groups. Serdahely concluded, “Thisstudy…supports the claims of previous researchersthat adults’ retrospective reports of childhood NDEs
are not embellished or distorted.”6
Another study, this by Bruce Greyson, MD, in2007 found that NDEs do not seem embellished ordiminished even after nearly twenty years.7 This was a
study of seventy-two NDErs who shared their NDEs
and answered the sixteen questions comprising the
NDE Scale in the 1980s and then answered thequestions again almost twenty years later.
Comparison of the two administrations of the scale
showed no significant differences in overall scalescores or in responses to any of the sixteen questions.
This study provides some of the strongest evidence
that NDEs are reliably remembered even when shared
decades after their occurrence.
An additional important study was done by Pim
van Lommel, MD, and associates in 2001.8 This was
the largest prospective study of NDEs ever performed.
As part of this study, NDErs who suffered cardiac
arrest were interviewed about the NDE shortly after theincident, then two and eight years later. This study
found that NDErs accurately recalled their NDEs eightyears after their occurrence.
It doesn’t matter if the NDEr is four years old or
forty-four, the elements of the near-death experience
remain the same. The best evidence finds that NDEs
are neither embellished nor forgotten over time. NDEs
are not “created” in the subject’s mind by what theysee on television or read in books, and they are notsignificantly modified by cultural influences. Near-deathexperiences are real events that happen to people of
all ages.
What do the children who approach death think of
their experience on the other side, and what do they dowith it over the course of their lives? The
Transformations Study conducted by Dr. Morseprovides evidence that NDEs create changes in an
individual that can’t be faked.9 He studied more thanfour hundred people, some of whom had near-deathexperiences and some who did not. He administered
tests with questions about happiness, spirituality,
death anxiety, mysticism, materialism, eating habits,
and psychic abilities. All of this was aimed at exploring
the aftereffects of NDEs on people who’d experienced
them as children.
Morse found that those who’d had near-deathexperiences as children had less death anxiety than
the non-NDE population; they also had increased
psychic abilities, a higher zest for life, and increased
intelligence. Among his conclusions was that NDEs
are real because their long-term effects are real. In
short, as we at NDERF say, you can’t fake the effects
of a near-death experience.

REAL AND TRANSFORMING

All of which reminds me of Katie, who as a three-yearold child inhaled a cashew nut that lodged in her
windpipe. She was standing in the kitchen when theshocking event took place. She turned blue andpassed out. Her grandfather, a firefighter, was unable
to revive her and pronounced her dead.
The ambulance arrived nearly thirty minutes after
the 911 call. Katie was watching much of the action
from a place outside of her body. As she wrote:

When I died, I rose above my body and saw mygrandfather working on my body. My body was of nointerest to me; instead, I moved out of the room
toward a presence I felt in the living room area. I went
toward this presence, which was within a brilliant,sun[lit], bright, space—not a tunnel, but an area. The
presence was unbelievable peace, love, acceptance,
calm, and joy. The presence enveloped me, and my
joy was indescribable—as I write this I am broughtback to this emotion, and it delights me still. The
feeling is spectacular. I did not experience thispresence as God (I was too young to understand theconcept), but I did experience this presence as thatwhich made me. I knew without a doubt that I was amade creature, a being that owed its existence to thispresence.
I do not remember reentering my body.
When I woke up the next day, I knew two things
for sure: (1) that there is life after death and (2) I was acreated being. I did not know this as rational
knowledge, but rather I expressed this by pestering
my mother with question after question: Who made

me? What was eternity? And what was God? She wasunable to answer my questions but was wise enoughto let me talk to others who could.
In her NDERF entry, Katie declares several times
that the experience was “definitely real.”

Even now, when I recall the experience, it is more real
than anything I have ever experienced in my life. I
recall not only the memory but also the emotion. This
still motivates me to ask questions.
A skeptic could still discount these as just being
empty words. But NDErs often actively respond totheir remarkable experience. Katie’s NDE motivated
her to continue her search into her adult life:

This experience moved me so deeply that I havededicated my life to looking for answers to myquestions through the study [of] both philosophy andreligion. I am currently working on [a] doctorate intheology.
Near-death experiences are real andtransformative. They are not the product of our
television culture, and they are not invented by thepeople who experience them, even if those people arechildren.
Personally, I listen to children more carefully now

than ever before. From the mouths of children we canlearn important lessons pointing to the reality of theafterlife.

10
PROOF #8: WORLDWIDE CONSISTENCY

Man is a piece of the universe made alive.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ours is the largest cross-cultural study of NDEs ever
performed, a fact that makes me feel confident inpresenting these remarkable conclusions:

The core NDE experience is the same all over theworld: Whether it’s a near-death experience of a
Hindu in India, a Muslim in Egypt, or a Christian in the
United States, the same core elements are present inall, including out-of-body experience, tunnel
experience, feelings of peace, beings of light, a life
review, reluctance to return, and transformation after
the NDE. In short, the experience of dying appears
similar among all humans, no matter where they live.

Preexisting cultural beliefs do not significantly
influence the content of NDEs: Near-deathexperiences from around the world appear to have
similar content regardless of the culture of the country
that the NDErs live in. This is certainly consistent with
our findings in chapter 9 that very young children, age

five and younger, who have received much lesscultural influence than adults, have NDEs with content
that is the same as that of older children and adults.
Near-death experiences occurring under generalanesthesia can’t have any cultural influence, or
influence from any other prior experiences in their life.
However, NDEs occurring under general anesthesia
are basically the same as all other NDEs, as we saw
in chapter 6.
The striking ability of near-death experiencers toconsistently recall in great detail their experiences,even decades later, is a testament to the power of thenear-death experience. It is a unique and remarkablestate of consciousness. It is often the most dramaticand transformative experience in the life of NDErs,
wherever in the world they live.
The evidence suggesting that there is no
significant difference in near-death experiences
worldwide makes possible a major step forward in
human relations. It means that at the point of death, allpeople may have a similar experience. We may beseparated by languages and cultures, but thepossibility of having similar spiritual experiences as
dramatic and transformative as NDEs unites us
around the world.
Recognizing that people from all cultures
experience similar events at the point of death may be
a useful tool for cross-cultural understanding anddialogue. That makes NDEs an important spiritual
concept that can help humanity strive toward world
peace. The evidence that near-death experiences arebasically the same worldwide may be a reason to stop
bickering over differences and instead focus on oursimilarities.

LARGEST CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY EVER
Some years ago Jody Long began the enormous
project of translating the NDERF survey into nonEnglish languages. Jody began developing a networkof volunteer language translators, one that has grown
to more than two hundred fifty translators worldwide.
These volunteers translate non-English NDEs, all ofwhich are posted on the website in both their original
language and the English translation. The volunteers
also translate English NDEs posted on NDERF into
non-English languages. This allows bilingual readers
to correct any possible inaccurate translations.
Currently there are more than two thousand neardeath-experience accounts in non-English languages
posted on NDERF, with more added regularly.
Sections of the NDERF website and the NDEr
questionnaire have been translated into over twenty
languages. With the NDERF questionnaire translated
into so many different languages, nearly all NDErs
throughout the world can find the NDERF
questionnaire in a language they are familiar with. This
allows NDERF to receive NDEs from around theworld, including non-English NDEs. No prior study has
been able to directly compare so many NDEs sharedin English with NDEs shared in languages other thanEnglish by having all the NDErs personally answer thesame questions. That was done by using thequestionnaires on the NDERF website.
For the NDERF cross-cultural study, NDEs fromcountries where English is not the predominantlanguage were divided into two study groups. The firststudy group included 79 NDEs shared in languages
other than English, and the second study group
included 26 NDEs shared in English from countries
where English was not the predominant language. The
NDERF study also looked at NDEs from non-Westerncountries, which will be discussed later.
The first study group was 79 NDErs fromcountries where English is not the predominantlanguage who shared their NDEs in a language otherthan English. The comparison group included 583
NDEs shared in English from countries where English
is the predominant language.
To compare the two groups of NDEs, I usednearly the same methodology that was discussed
previously in chapters 6 and 9, where we discussed
the NDEs under general anesthesia and in children.
For the cross-cultural part of the NDERF study, I
included all NDEs regardless of their score on the
NDE Scale. I felt this was reasonable, as the NDE
Scale has not been validated for non-English NDEs
and non-Western NDEs. This part of the study included
only NDEs that were posted on the NDERF website.
The results: In comparing the first study groupcomposed of non-English-language NDEs with thecomparison group, all thirty-three NDE elements were
present in both groups. Of the thirty-three NDE
elements compared, eleven elements appeared with astatistically differing frequency of occurrence between
the two groups, and two more elements wereborderline statistically different. These results indicate
many significant differences in the responses of these
two groups of NDErs to the thirty-three questions about
NDE content.
The results were surprising and puzzling. Could

these results be due to NDEs being different aroundthe world? Or could language translation issues resultin them seeming to have different content when theircontent is actually similar?
In scientific studies, when puzzling results arefound, it often helps to look deeper for an explanation.
That is exactly what we did with the NDERF crosscultural study. To look deeper at non-English NDEs, anexperienced NDE research volunteer, Lynn, came to
the rescue. A questionnaire was developed forreviewing the content of NDEs posted on NDERF. The
questionnaire included fifteen questions about NDE
content. All 79 non-English NDEs in the first study
group had been translated into English and posted on
the NDERF website. Lynn completed thisquestionnaire for all 79 non-English NDEs and all 583
English NDEs in the comparison group. Her hard work
allowed us to more directly compare the content of
non-English NDEs with the comparison group ofEnglish-language NDEs.
From the comparison of fifteen NDE elements
between the two groups, there were only two questions
where the percentage of occurrence of the NDE
element was statistically different. There were no NDE
elements where the percentage of occurrence of the
NDE element was borderline statistically different.
Lynn’s review of both groups of near-deathexperience accounts found many fewer differences in
NDE content than was suggested from the previous
results from the first study group. This suggested to me
that non-English-speaking NDErs might have asomewhat different interpretation and understanding of
the translated NDERF survey questions than did
English-speaking NDErs. This language barrier mightaccount for most, and perhaps all, of the apparent
differences in responses to the NDERF survey
questions between the two groups.
It is very likely that some words and concepts in
the NDERF survey questions may be misunderstood if
the survey is taken in a language other than English.
For example, the NDERF survey includes words andphrases like senses, unearthly, and harmony or unity
with the universe. These words and phrases were nothaphazardly chosen. They are straight from the NDE
Scale questions, the most validated questionnaire forEnglish-language NDE surveys. However, if you don’tknow the nuances of English, it is easy to see howthese words and phrases could be misunderstood orinterpreted differently from their English meanings.
To help understand how language barriers might
affect responses to the NDERF survey, the NDERF
cross-cultural study looked at a second study group.
The second study group was made up of 26 NDEs that
had been shared with NDERF in English but that camefrom countries around the world where English is not
the prevailing language. This is an interesting study
group, as these NDErs live in a culture unique to theircountry yet understand English well enough to share
their NDEs and complete a complex questionnaire in
English. The comparison group included the same 583
NDEs used in the first study group, that is, NDEs
shared in English from countries where English is the
predominant language. As with the first study group, I
compared the responses of the second study groupwith the comparison group to the thirty-three questions
on the NDERF questionnaire that covered NDE
elements.
I almost fell out of my chair when I first saw theresults of this part of the study. All thirty-three NDE
elements were present in both groups. The percentage
of NDEs with each NDE element was the same in bothgroups; no NDE element occurred statisticallysignificantly more or less often in either group. There
was a trend toward a significant difference in the
responses to only one question.
The conclusion: The most reasonable conclusionfrom the NDERF cross-cultural NDE study is that thecontent of near-death experiences appears to be thesame around the world. Such experiences, in both
English-and non-English-speaking countries, include
the same NDE elements. The elements appear tofollow the same order of occurrence. In reading theaccounts of NDEs from around the world, including
those shared in English and those translated into
English, I am impressed at how strikingly similar theyare. You have probably noted that in prior chaptersthere are many examples of NDEs from around theworld, and these experiences were like all other NDEs.
There appears to be little difference, and most likely no
difference, in the frequency of occurrence of NDE
elements in NDEs around the world. This is further
strong evidence that NDEs are not products of culturalbeliefs or prior life experiences. Near-deathexperiences are, in a word, real.

MORE THAN JUST YES AND NO
Comparing NDEs from different cultures will always
require more than just statistics. As we have seen
throughout this book, NDEs often have an emotion, a
power, and a depth that transcend the limited
questions typically asked to “understand” them.

Questions that require a “Yes,” “Uncertain,” or “No”
response simply don’t do justice to this experience. I
believe that to really understand NDEs, one must readthem.
To understand my position that NDEs around theworld are more similar than dissimilar, it is helpful toread some representative NDEs that were shared inlanguages other than English and then translated into
English. I find them similar to typical NDEs fromEnglish-speaking countries.
Elisa from Italy was transformed so much by thisNDE, which took place when she fell from a cliff into aravine, that she considers it her “second birth”:

Suddenly I slid from the wall, and then all was dark
around me, deep dark. I didn’t have a body, I was
immaterial…. I forgot my body. The time moved fast,
and my thoughts were very fast. I saw myself at two
years old, then at four in the sea, etc. Suddenly mylife was over, and then I saw three sides of myprobable future. In that moment I was very sadbecause I was dead and I knew it clearly and I wanted
to return…. Slowly I saw a bright light around me; perinstinct I [knew] that was “the line,” the “passage,” andif I passed through it I was dead. I decided not to passinto it because I wanted to live in my world and enjoy
all things in it…. I began to pray…. Suddenly it was
dark but a different dark, and I began to feel my own
body again, and then I opened my eyes and saw theblue sky, and I was ecstatic because I returned in life.
I was completely changed.

A woman we will call Hafur, from Colombia, had anear-death experience that allowed her to see her life
reviewed several times. It gave her insight into what
was important in her life:

The figure on my right, who was guiding me, stopped,
and I could not see his face, and as though we wereat a small, enclosed beach, there was a hill thatserved as a place for projecting my life frombeginning to end several times, at first rapidly andafterward more slowly. It was amazing how my life wasshown with events I had completely forgotten about
and others that were so insignificant that it felt like I
was seeing each frame of the personal movie of mylife on earth. I realized that I understood everythingwith a great clarity and superlucidity I had neverexperienced before. I discovered that I had
personally chosen to take on a physical body andhave the life experiences I was having. I realized I
had wasted time in suffering, and what I should havebeen doing was using my freedom to choose true
love, and not pain, in all that came into my life.
DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONAs you can see, these experiences have the sameelements as NDEs from people in Nebraska or New
York. And although there may be some minor
differences, in truth, looking at NDEs around the world
is like showing a class of young, multinational students
a photograph of the Eiffel Tower in France; some willknow what it is, others will think it’s scaffolding for abuilding in progress, and others will think it’s aspaceship. All of the children are seeing the samething; they are just interpreting and expressing it
differently based on what they know of life.
One need only read several of these incredible
accounts to realize that there is a raw power in NDEs
that transcends language. There are so many
examples of this that I could easily fill a book withnothing but transformative near-death experiencesfrom all over the world. But if I had to choose just one
that sums up the message of all NDEs worldwide, it
might be that of Hafur, the woman from Colombia
whose experience is quoted above. Her experience
allowed her to see her life several times, as though “I
was seeing each frame of the personal movie of mylife on earth.”This experience reshaped Hafur, providing her
with revelations that transcend geographic andlanguage barriers. Below is an edited version of thewisdom she received from the light and that she
included on her NDERF questionnaire whencompleting this sentence: A part of what I understoodand remember today is…
We live in a “plural unity” or “oneness.” In other words,
our reality is “unity in plurality and plurality in unity.”That I was everything and everything was me, without
essential differences other than in earthly
appearances.
That there is no God outside ourselves, but rather,
God is in everything and everything is a part of God,
as is life itself.
That everything is part of an essential game of life
itself, and to that degree we live by true love—unconditional and universal.
That everything is experience and that this life and thenext are essentially the same because everything isGod.
Death is a metamorphosis of time—one more illusionborn of our mental concepts.
That “I” includes “we.”That the “creator” is eternally creating, and one of thecreations is the practice of conscious love. One
learns to paint by painting.
Consciously living by love is the essence of life itself.
At the end of Hafur’s list, she expressed afrustration that I have read and heard from many neardeath experiencers. “I learned thousands of otherthings without end,” she wrote. “It is difficult to express
in words because words are insufficient.”
Perhaps that’s another real issue. It isn’t justwords that get in the way. It’s the indescribable qualityof the near-death experience that we are often
wrestling with. That alone makes it a universal
experience.
So far we have looked at near-death experiencesfrom around the world. Some of these NDE accounts
came from non-Western countries with cultures thatare usually very different from the cultures of Englishspeaking countries. We will take a closer look at these
fascinating NDEs from non-Western countries.

NON-WESTERN NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
Next we will look at near-death experiences in nonWestern countries. I consider a “non-Western country”

to include areas of the world that are predominantly notof Jewish or Christian heritage.1 Near-deathexperiences from people living in non-Westerncountries are much harder to study than are those of
their Western counterparts. Researchers encounter
both geographical and language barriers in reaching
non-Western NDErs. Some people who had neardeath experiences have difficulty describing theirexperience in words, and a language barrier may
compound this problem.2 Finally, people living in nonWestern countries may not have been exposed to theconcept of near-death experience. They may have had
a near-death experience but not know that what theyexperienced is called an NDE. It is easier for the
public in Western countries to hear about near-deathexperiences because books and the media have been
discussing NDEs for decades.
A review of prior scholarly research on nonWestern NDEs reveals that there is much work to be
done. In the early years of researching near-deathexperiences, a common problem was the tendency todraw conclusions from studying small numbers of
NDEs. A number of studies tried to draw conclusions
from fewer than five case studies. Indeed, several ofthese studies attempted to draw meaningfulconclusions from only one NDE case study! Drawing
conclusions from a study of very few NDEs would be
like testing a new medication on only a handful ofpeople; in all likelihood very little usable information
could come from such work. Over the years, as more
NDEs became available for research, these earlier
conclusions were frequently found to be incorrect.
In other non-Western NDE studies, some in the
study group did not have convincing life-threatening

events. Rather, many of these studies reported casesof apparent hallucinations, spontaneous out-of-bodyexperiences, or other paranormal events that may
happen without approaching death. Some of thepeople in these studies were likely undergoing febrilehallucinations, for instance, which are caused by highfever and which may be more common in countries
that have more infectious illnesses.
In essence, the researchers may have believedthat all the people in their study groups had had lifethreatening events when they actually had not. Also,
there are many non-Western NDE studies in which thedefinition of near-death experience was never madeclear.
Other non-Western NDE studies used accounts
that were published in the popular literature of thatcountry. These NDEs are probably not representativeof all NDEs in the country. Many of these non-Western
NDE studies also relied on second-person reporting.
This means that the researcher did not talk directly with
the NDEr but instead talked with someone else whoheard the near-death experience account, which
creates the concern that there may be significant
inaccuracy. Because of this concern, the NDERF study
excluded all second-person near-death experiencesfrom statistical analysis.
It is also important to realize that virtually all nonWestern NDE accounts published in English had to betranslated into English. This raises another concern:
how accurate is the translation? Some non-English
words and concepts don’t translate well, and thelanguage problem may be compounded in cultures
where the topic of death is taboo. We have alreadyseen how problematic language barriers are from ourstudy of NDEs around the world.
I could go on and on, but my point is clear: mostprior studies of non-Western NDEs have serious flaws
that could create the impression that non-Western
NDEs are different from Western NDEs. Let’s look atsome non-Western near-death experiences.
Gülden, a Muslim man from Turkey, took thisvoyage to a heavenly realm when an artery burst in theright temporal lobe of his brain. Here’s his story:

I felt that I was rising up above my bed, in the
direction of a white, very bright light. Meanwhile, I saw
my uncle, who had died one month before. Whilepassing me, he said, “Not yet.” I was surprised how I
understood him without spoken words, but I felt very
peaceful. Later a woman came to me. If I saw her now,
I would recognize her. She took me to a wonderfulplace with mountains and said that this was the placeof my life. The place we went was beautiful, but I said
to her that this place is not my life’s place. Then wecame to a seashore with a little village, and she said
again that this place was my life, but I didn’t know thisplace and I said to her that this is not the place of mylife. After we traveled to some more very beautiful
places she said that I was not ready to stay in theseplaces and asked me what I remember about my life.
Mustapha was twelve years old and living in
Algeria when he nearly drowned:

I knew that I was drowning, especially as I could not
avoid swallowing seawater. Then all of a sudden I
could see myself floating within the water, in anincredible calmness and physical and psychologicalrelaxation. I could see this body, very calm, drifting
slowly, and also saw bubbles coming out of its mouth.
The scene was very real, but with an intense
luminosity. I could see everything under the water, as
if I had a diving mask on. My vision was near 300
degrees. It was like being a short distance from mybody, but I could also see what was happening
behind me. I noticed small details: pebbles that wereochre-colored (like fragments of house tiles), also
light-colored and striped pebbles, on the seabed,seaweed floating beneath the surface. The rest was
sand. There were also small, almost translucent fish
just under the surface, which were moving thendisappeared with a sudden flick of the tail.
Carol is from Saudi Arabia. She had acomplication of childbirth. This experience, she said,
helped her realize that “God is everywhere, even thesmallest part of material creation.” Here is her story:

I began seeing everything white around me, like thisblank page to write on. At the same time I felt apresence, as if someone was with me and was
explaining to me about some doubts I had at one
time. Not with words, but with images and perhaps
telepathy, since I do not remember hearing a voice.
But I could understand everything he said, and it was
all so clear and obvious that I wondered how I could
not have understood this before and that my motherwould also be happy to know it. I understood thateverything good and bad happened for a purpose.
At NDERF we have received many accounts ofnear-death experiences that were personallyexperienced by doctors and scientists. Here is one
such case. Dr. Sahar is a physician in Sudan, andhere is her account:

The next day in the afternoon, I felt that pain again. I
was getting worse and worse, like the delivery pain. I
then fainted. My husband, who is a doctor too, hit myface quickly. I awoke at once. He hurriedly carried me
to the hospital again. There they told me that mybaby is out of the womb and the fallopian tube
exploded, which caused me to hemorrhage. They did
an urgent operation. After the operation I told myhusband that I felt a very great feeling in my first faintat home. I felt that I went to another place where there
is very good weather with a lovely breeze. I felt
there…a calm and peace which I have neverexperienced in my life. I told him that I was talking
with anonymous people for a long time, as if formonths. I don’t remember what we were talking about
or who they were, but I remember that I was so happy
with them, as if we were sitting there for months! I felt
very angry and sorry when my husband made me
return to consciousness. Coming back, I felt this life
is narrow, dirty, and disgusting. I want to go back there
and stay forever.

Simran is from India. He nearly died in a bus
crash in which he experienced severe trauma,including head injuries. To Simran, one of the mostmeaningful parts of his near-death experience was thefollowing:

Then a bright light appeared, having a soft man’s
voice that told me, “You will leave everything behind—your loved ones, the hard-earned award, money,
even your clothes. You’ll come to me empty-handed.”
The light also gave me an important message tofollow it as much [as] possible.
Portions of the NDERF website have beentranslated into many languages, including Arabic,
Chinese, Indonesian, and many others. This allows
near-death experiencers from non-Western countries
to share their NDEs in their own language and torespond to the same survey questions as other NDErs
around the world.
The NDERF study of non-Western NDEs is
unique. No prior large study has published thenarratives of the NDEs, has included only experiencesthat were medically determined to have included a lifethreatening event, and has directly compared the
responses from NDErs from non-Western andWestern countries to the same detailed questions
about the content of their NDEs.
Nineteen non-Western NDErs shared a narrativeof their near-death experience and completed the
NDERF survey. Nine of these NDEs were shared in
English and ten in languages other than English. We

compared responses to thirty-three questions
regarding NDE elements from these non-Western
NDEs to the responses from the same comparisongroup of English NDEs from predominantly Englishspeaking countries that we discussed earlier in thischapter.
The results: All NDE elements that were present
in Western NDEs were present in non-Western NDEs.
Of the thirty-three NDE elements studied, there was astatistically significant difference between the groups
in the responses to five questions, while the responses
to two questions were borderline significant. For
twenty-six of the thirty-three questions, the NDE
elements occurred in both groups with statisticallyequal frequency.
The conclusion: All near-death experienceelements appearing in Western NDEs are present in
non-Western NDEs. There are many non-Western
NDEs with narratives that are strikingly similar to thenarratives of typical Western NDEs. At a minimum, it
may be concluded that non-Western NDEs are much
more similar to Western NDEs than dissimilar. Recall
that slightly over half of the non-Western near-deathexperiences studied were shared in languages otherthan English. Earlier in this chapter we found that
language translation issues appear to account forsignificant differences in the content of NDEs fromaround the world—differences that probably do not
actually exist. With these considerations, I believe areasonable interpretation of the NDERF study findings
are that non-Western NDEs appear to be akin toWestern NDEs. If there are any differences at all
between non-Western and Western NDEs, thedifferences are more likely to be minor thansubstantial.3
At NDERF we have not yet received enoughEnglish NDEs from non-Western countries to be able
to directly compare them with English NDEs frompredominantly English-speaking countries. I expectthat someday we will have enough English NDEs from
non-Western countries to allow such a comparison.
That will certainly be an interesting study.
Until now, all NDERF study findings presented inthis book have been consistent with the findings ofscores of prior NDE studies. The NDERF study of nonWestern NDEs was different, as the findings from thispart of the NDERF study are dissimilar from theconclusions of prior studies of non-Western NDEs.
From our prior discussion, it is easy to see howdifficult it is to study non-Western near-deathexperiences. Several researchers have done the best
they could with existing data and tried to reachconclusions about non-Western NDEs. These
researchers were aware of the difficulties with this typeof research, and their conclusions are recognized as
tentative.
One of the leading researchers of non-Western
NDEs is Dr. Allan Kellehear, a sociology professor. He
reviewed previously published reports of non-Westernnear-death experiences and studied five NDE
elements. He concluded that deceased or supernatural
beings commonly appeared in non-Western NDEs. He
also found that non-Western NDEs commonlydescribed otherworldly visits. Both of these elements
are also common in Western NDEs. However, Dr.
Kellehear’s review found some differences between
his study group of non-Western and Western NDEs.
He states: “Life review and the tunnel experienceseem to be culture-specific features.”4Is this so? From the NDERF study of 19 nonWestern NDEs and comparison group of 583 NDEs, I
looked at the NDERF survey questions regarding life
reviews and tunnels.
There were two questions about life review, withsome differences in the wording of the questions. In
response to the survey question “Did you experience a
review of past events in your life?” the two groups
answered as follows:

Western NDEs
Yes: 128
Uncertain: 49
No: 408
Non-Western NDEs
Yes: 4
Uncertain: 0
No: 15
There was no statistically significant difference inthe responses between the two groups. The second
survey question relating to life review was an NDE
Scale question that asked, “Did scenes from your pastcome back to you?” Responses allowed to thisquestion were “Past flashed before me, out of mycontrol,” “Remembered many past events,” and “No.” Alife review was considered to have occurred if either ofthe first two responses to this question was selected—that is, any option but “No.” A life review was present in
32 percent of the non-Western NDE group and 25
percent of the Western NDE group. This was not a
statistically significant difference. In view of theresponses to both of these questions, the life review
appears to be present and occur with equal frequency
in both non-Western and Western NDEs.
What about tunnel experiences? There was one
NDERF survey question that asked, “Did you pass intoor through a tunnel or enclosure?” Responses to thisquestion were:Western NDEs
Yes: 188
Uncertain: 97
No: 298
Non-Western NDEs
Yes: 8
Uncertain: 1
No: 10
There was no statistically significant difference inthe responses between the two groups. As with life
reviews, tunnel experiences appear to occur in both
non-Western and Western NDEs, and with equal
frequency. The NDERF study found no evidence thatlife reviews or tunnel experiences are culture-specificfeatures of near-death experiences.
Throughout this book we have found no significant
cultural influences on the content of NDEs. This
includes the results from our study of very smallchildren, age five and younger, whose NDEs
appeared identical to those of older children andadults. We also found no cultural influence whatsoeverin the content of NDEs shared in English frompredominantly non-English-speaking countries fromaround the world. Moreover, we have analyzed NDEs

occurring under general anesthesia. These NDErs
cannot have had any conscious memories at the timeof their experience, including memories that areculturally determined.
In researching non-Western NDE accounts fromother sources, I have found some that seem to include
a life-threatening event at the time of the experiencebut with content quite different from typical Westernnear-death experiences. I can’t tell if this apparent
difference in NDE content is real or due to languagetranslation issues. It is also possible that even if thecontent of near-death experiences is the same acrossthe different cultures of the world, the NDErs may
interpret their experiences differently. To quote leading
NDE researcher Dr. Bruce Greyson and associates:“Even the cross-cultural differences observed suggestthat it is not the core experience that differs but theways in which people interpret what they haveexperienced.”5
I coauthored a scholarly book chapter that
reviewed thirty years of research about thecharacteristics of Western NDEs. In this review wewere unable to find any characteristics of Western
NDEs that could be considered to be culturally
determined. We concluded:
Researchers so far have tended to find that mosthypothesized predictors of NDE occurrence,incidence, contents, and aftereffects are not reliable.6
At NDERF we have received many dozens of
non-Western near-death experiences. Many of these
NDEs were shared as narratives only, without theNDErs completing the NDERF questionnaire. Fromreviewing all of NDERF’s non-Western near-deathexperiences, I find that these non-Western NDEs are
generally similar to Western NDEs.7
In summary, the NDERF study found thenarratives of non-Western NDEs to be generally
similar to Western NDEs. Directly comparing theelements of non-Western and Western near-deathexperiences revealed that all elements that occurred inWestern NDEs were found in non-Western NDEs aswell. As we saw in our study of NDEs around the world,
language translation issues may account for apparent,
but not real, differences in the content of non-Westernand Western near-death experiences.8 Any
differences that might exist between non-Western andWestern NDEs are likely minor.

MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE AFTERLIFE
The NDERF cross-cultural NDE study found neardeath experiences to be remarkably similar around theworld, including NDEs that take place in Western andnon-Western countries. This is further evidence that
NDEs are much more than simply a product of culturalbeliefs or prior life experiences. Near-deathexperiences remind us that although the people onearth may be a world apart, they may share thisimportant spiritual experience. It’s amazing to think thatno matter what country we call home, perhaps our real
home is in the wondrous unearthly realms consistently
described by NDErs around the world.

11
PROOF #9: CHANGED LIVES

If men define situations as real, they are real in theirconsequences.

—William Isaac Thomas
It is difficult for most of us to imagine what it’s like tohave a near-death experience. To begin with, a person
who has had one has nearly died. Nobody expects tonearly die, let alone die. As Sigmund Freud put it so
succinctly, “When we attempt to imagine death, we
perceive ourselves as spectators.”
When a near-death experience takes place, it isgenerally completely different from anything people
could have imagined ever happening to them. When
NDErs describe their experience as being “unworldly,”
they are generally understating it. Words like unworldly
don’t begin to explain an experience that takes you outof your physical body and into realms described so
vividly in the dozens of NDE accounts we havepresented so far.

BARRIERS TO SHARING
It is a long journey from the time a near-deathexperience takes place until the changes following theexperience are fully manifested. These life changes
often include transformations in the near-deathexperiencer’s values, beliefs, and relations with others.
Collectively, these changes are called aftereffects.
Near-death experiencers often tell me that theaftereffects were the most important part of theirexperiences. As we will see in this chapter, aftereffects
can dramatically affect the NDEr for the rest of his or
her life. To understand NDE aftereffects, it is helpful to“walk a mile” with NDErs, following what happens fromthe time of the NDE until the aftereffects become fully
manifest later in life.
For NDErs, the first challenge is usually to recoverfrom what nearly killed them. After regaining
consciousness following their life-threatening event,
NDErs may have to deal with both the shock of theirlife-threatening event and the memory of their neardeath experience.
Many people believe that NDErs would jump at
the opportunity to share such a dramatic experience
immediately after it happens. In reality, this is not
usually the case. After recovering from nearly dying, if
they try to share their story, they often encounter
another challenge: they may be met with indifference
and even negative reactions. It’s easy to understandhow crushed a near-death experiencer would be, trying
to share how remarkable the experience was, only to
be told that the NDE was due to drugs, hallucinations,or a dream or was imaginary and never really
happened. When NDErs encounter such inappropriate
reactions from others, they may suppress theirexperience and their memory of it. If they do, thepossibility that they will develop life-enhancing

aftereffects is greatly reduced.
Compounding the difficulty NDErs face in sharingis that near-death experiences are often so unworldlythat they may be difficult to express in words. Neardeath experiences are often called “ineffable,” not only
because they are difficult to explain in words, but also
because it may be difficult to mentally process these
astounding experiences. People may struggle for along time to understand what has happened to them,and they may believe that others won’t understandeither.
Still, some NDErs bravely try to share theirexperience with medical personnel shortly after it
occurs. Sometimes they are lucky enough to findnurses or doctors who understand NDEs and are
sympathetic. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
Many in the medical profession are uninformed about
NDEs or just plain don’t care. The result is a negative
response and a look that says, “You must be crazy.”
Imagine how traumatic it is for NDErs to encounter
reactions like this one when they share theirexperiences.
Daniel, who lives in Peru, nearly died frommeningitis. Here’s what happened when he tried toshare his near-death experience:

I told some people about my experience, and theysaid I was crazy. My own doctor had me get
psychiatric help because I said that I spoke with God.
Near-death experiencers may be very
uncomfortable sharing their NDE with their medicalcaregivers. This was the case with Juanita, who nearly
died from a hemorrhage after delivery.

I never told my doctor or nurses. I felt they would think
I was crazy!
It’s no wonder that medical personnel have adifficult time knowing how to respond to a patient’s
near-death experience. Most patients at first don’tknow how to respond to them either. The unexpectednature of an NDE presents a significant barrier tosharing the experience. Most NDErs who share theircase study with NDERF did not know what a neardeath experience was at the time it occurred. An
NDERF survey question asks, “Did you have any
knowledge of near-death experience (NDE) prior toyour experience?” A resounding 66.4 percent ofrespondents—nearly two-thirds—answered “No.” Only
12.7 percent of NDErs questioned in the NDERF study
felt that their experience, when it occurred, included
features consistent with their beliefs. Understandably,
it would be difficult to talk about such a profoundexperience, especially if you didn’t believe thatanything of its kind could take place.
These barriers to sharing NDEs clarify why many
NDErs do not speak of their experience for years oreven decades. However, the great majority of NDErs—more than 90 percent in the NDERF survey—
eventually shared their experiences with other people.

TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGESWhile people who have a near-death experience often
share it first with their immediate family and spouse,
we found in the NDERF study that eventually many dotalk about their NDE freely, including the aftereffects
and associated positive changes that have takenplace in their lives as a result of the experience. The
original version of the NDERF study questionnaire
asked, “Has your life changed specifically as a resultof your experience?” Of those responding, 73.1
percent answered “Yes,” 12.7 percent answered“Uncertain,” and only 14.2 percent answered “No.”Thus the great majority, but not all, of NDErs
experienced changes in their lives as a result of theirnear-death experience.
The percentage of NDErs selecting “No” in
response to this survey question must be interpretedwith caution. Some NDErs completed the survey
shortly after their near-death experience. They may
experience changes later in life as a result of theirexperience. Other studies have shown that it takes aslong as seven years or more for a person who has anear-death experience to fully integrate into their life
the changes that resulted from the experience. Neardeath-experience researcher P. M. H. Atwater studied
this and concluded, “My research has shown that it
takes the average child or adult experiencer aminimum of seven years to successfully adjust to what
happened to them.”1
Many different aftereffects of near-deathexperiences have been described in prior studies.
One of the earliest studies found that NDErs described
more self-confidence, a stronger sense of spirituality, a
reduced interest in material gain or status, and agreater appreciation of life.2 Later research found amyriad of other aftereffects, including a belief in thesacredness of life, a sense of God’s presence, and anawareness of meaning and purpose in life. Near-deathexperiencers often become increasingly aware of theneeds of others and are willing to reach out to them.
They may seek to live life more fully and joyfully.
Personally speaking, I think the world needs a lot more
people with values like these.
Following their near-death experience, many
people become more religious or spiritual. They may
become increasingly committed to their preexisting
religious practices. Other NDErs become lessinterested in traditional religious practices, especially
if their religious group was dismissive or negative
about their NDE.
Near-death experiencers usually undergo not justone aftereffect but many. Developing these majorchanges in values and understandings takes time. It
also takes a lot of work. In a real sense, NDErs may
feel reborn into their new beliefs and values. Those
who manifest substantial changes may seem to havebecome completely different people to their friends
and family. The great majority of NDErs find theiraftereffects to be positive and life-enhancing. It is very
uncommon for NDErs to have prolonged negative or
life-diminishing aftereffects, though this has beenreported.
Experiencing a change in values may lead NDErs
to reevaluate their jobs. For example, at the time of
their near-death experience, they may have been inoccupations that valued cutthroat competition and a“win at all costs” mentality. With their values shifting
toward compassion and reduced materialistic beliefs,
they now find that such occupations increasinglyconflict with their new way of looking at the world. No
longer sharing the values of their workplaces, they may
change occupations. By contrast, if their occupations
emphasize positive interpersonal interactions andserving others, their compassionate values may resultin their becoming star job performers.
Near-death experiencers may reevaluate their
existing interpersonal relationships. They may find thecourage to end negative and unloving relationships.
Often they seek out positive and loving relationshipsthat are more in line with their new values. Many
NDErs find that their increasingly loving andcompassionate interaction with others results instronger marriages and relationships.
The skeptics claim that all these aftereffects
following a near-death experience are due to theexperience of nearly dying rather than to the NDE
itself. Perhaps, they claim, it’s the close brush withdeath, not the NDE, that explains the life changes thattake place later. Once again, as we have seen
consistently throughout this book, the facts contradict
the skeptics’ claims.
Two prospective studies of cardiac arrest
survivors found that it is mainly the near-deathexperience and not just the close brush with death that
results in the positive life-changing aftereffects.3 In
both studies, all the participants had a cardiac arrest
and nearly died. The study participants were divided
into two groups: those who had a near-deathexperience and those who did not. The studies
assessed aftereffects in both groups. Both studies
found that the NDErs described many more
aftereffects than the cardiac arrest survivors who did
not have a near-death experience. Both studies foundthat the aftereffects reported by NDErs increased overtime.
Three studies also found that NDEs with moredetailed content, often referred to as more “depth” inthe NDE, were strongly correlated with the occurrenceof more aftereffects.4 These studies further establishthat it is mainly the near-death experience that resultsin the aftereffects.
The changes experienced by NDErs are usuallyboth profound and lasting. Pim van Lommel, MD, themedical researcher in the Netherlands who has been
discussed elsewhere in this book, discovered a lot
about the transformations NDErs undergo in his studyof cardiac arrest survivors. Here is what he had to say
about the transformative effects of NDEs:[My work] was designed to assess whether thetransformation in attitude toward life and deathfollowing an NDE is the result of having an NDE or the
result of the cardiac arrest itself. In this follow-up
research into transformational processes after NDE,
we found a significant difference between patients withand without an NDE. The process of transformation
took several years to consolidate. Patients with an
NDE did not show any fear of death, they strongly
believed in an afterlife, and their insight in what is
important in life had changed: love and compassion for
oneself, for others, and for nature. They now
understood the cosmic law that everything one does toothers will ultimately be returned to oneself: hatred andviolence as well as love and compassion. Remarkably,
there was often evidence of increased intuitive
feelings. Furthermore, the long-lasting transformationaleffects of an experience that lasts only a few minutes
was a surprising and unexpected finding.5
Let’s take a closer look at some of the morecommon and interesting NDE aftereffects.

Increased Value of Loving Interactions
Love is one of the most common words NDErs
use to describe their experience, and for good reason.
People who have a near-death experience often
become more loving in their interactions with others
and increasingly value positive and empathic relations.
Occasionally the NDErs’ desire to relatecompassionately to others leads them to change jobs
and enter the healing professions. When asked in the
NDERF study questionnaire, “Have your relationships
changed specifically as a result of your experience?,”57.3 percent answered “Yes,” and many went on toelaborate.
Jewel, who nearly drowned while bodysurfing,
wrote,
Certainly it is in the best interests of yourself andeveryone you meet to be the most kind andcourteous that you can be. Treat everyone as you
would like to be treated. We meet simply anotherversion of ourselves every day.
Rusty, who nearly died from loss of blood, wrote,My outlook on life and what I hold to be important haschanged. My experiences and interactions with otherpeople, especially my family, have gained
importance.
Donna, who was nearly strangled to death,reported,

I was withdrawn and victimized before. I attracted badpeople and didn’t see it. I still seem to attract somebad ones, but I see it. I am very independent, strong,
focused, but can be too loving and too giving. I havefewer and need fewer relationships, but those I haveare more meaningful.
Gwen, whose heart stopped from pneumonia,
wrote,

I never was patient before; now I have lots and lots ofpatience. I have a lot of discernment too, which I
didn’t have before. I have empathy and understandthat none of us are ever going to be perfect in this life.
Although NDErs tend to become morecompassionate and loving, the NDERF study showsthat the changes experienced by NDErs may not bewell received by those around them. Friends andfamily members may find it difficult to relate to changes
in values and interests that take place as a result of anear-death experience. Also, NDErs may be less

willing to tolerate relationships that are unloving. One
NDEr named Joyce summed it up succinctly:

I think it planted a seed that helped me choose better
partners for myself and never to be in anotherabusive relationship.
Overall, though, NDErs tend to become
increasingly loving and accepting of themselves. Thisis especially noticeable if their NDE resulted from asuicide attempt, in which case the NDEr will rarely
attempt suicide again.6
A study from 1975, before near-deathexperiences were well known, presented the results ofinterviews with seven of only ten known survivors ofjumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. All seven of thesesuicide attempters described aftereffects of spiritual
rebirth and transformed lives. As one jumper said, “Itaffirmed my belief—there is a higher spiritual world. I
experienced a transcendence—in that moment I wasrefilled with new hope and purpose of being alive.”7
On rare occasions I receive e-mails from people,
often in the midst of depression, wondering if theyshould try suicide as a way to induce a near-deathexperience. My response is an immediate “absolutelyno.” I encourage those who are depressed to seek
counseling and also to discuss their life issues with
their health-care team. People who had near-deathexperiences as a result of suicide attempts almost
uniformly believe that their suicide attempts were aserious mistake. A personal experience of NDE
should never be sought by creating a life-threatening

event.

HEALING POWER OF NDESAs a physician, I am fascinated by NDE accounts
suggesting unexpected healings. These inexplicablehealings are uncommon but nevertheless deserve
mention. I cannot claim with certainty that inexplicablehealings occur after NDEs, but the case reports wehave suggest this might be happening. One thing I canbe certain of from my research is that the possibility of
inexplicable healings deserves more attention in NDE
research than it has received in the past.
Anita is from Hong Kong and was dying fromstage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. To say she was dying is
no exaggeration: the senior cancer doctor gave her
thirty-six hours to live. Anita became unconscious. She
had an out-of-body experience and was able to see
her doctor talking to her husband about forty feet down
the hall outside her room. She later verified her OBE
observations with her husband, who was “shocked.”
The healing associated with her near-deathexperience is among the most dramatic ever reported.
Anita tells what happened:

I was made to understand that, as tests had beentaken for my organ functions (and the results were notout yet), that if I chose life, the results would show thatmy organs were functioning normally. If I chose
death, the results would show organ failure as thecause of death, due to cancer. I was able to change
the outcome of the tests by my choice!

I made my choice, and as I started to wake up (ina very confused state, as I could not at that time tellwhich side of the veil I was on), the doctors camerushing into the room with big smiles on their faces,saying to my family, “Good news—we got the results,
and her organs are functioning—we can’t believe it!
Her body really did seem like it had shut down!”
After that, I began to recover rapidly. The doctors
had been waiting for me to become stable before
doing a lymph node biopsy to track the type of cancer
cells, and they could not even find a lymph node big
enough to suggest cancer. (Upon entering the
hospital my body was filled with swollen lymph
nodes.) They did a bone marrow biopsy, again to findthe cancer activity so they could adjust thechemotherapy according to the disease, and there
wasn’t any in the bone marrow. The doctors were very
confused but put it down to me suddenly responding
to the chemo. Because they themselves were unable
to understand what was going on, they made me
undergo test after test, all of which I passed with flying
colors, and clearing every test empowered me even
more! I had a full body scan, and because they could
not find anything, they made the radiologist repeat it
again!”
Because of my experience, I am now sharing
with everyone I know that miracles are possible inyour life every day. After what I have seen, I realizethat absolutely anything is possible, and that we did
not come here to suffer. Life is supposed to be great,
and we are very, very loved. The way I look at life haschanged dramatically, and I am so glad to have been
given a second chance to experience “heaven on

earth.”One case report of incredible healing after a neardeath experience came from Geralyn. At the age ofthirteen, Geralyn was fighting for her life. She had themost advanced stage of a highly aggressive
malignancy called Burkitt’s lymphoma. Both her neardeath experience and her healing were dramatic:

It was three months into being diagnosed with
Burkitt’s lymphoma. At the time, due to my age(thirteen), I was not told of the severity of the illness.
Only my parents and elders in my family knew that I
was given a 1 percent chance of survival. In fact, thedoctors told them that they should prepare for my“arrangements” as they believed I was not going tosurvive this illness. The disease had ravished mybody, and the spleen, liver, and intestines were filledwith tumors.
One evening, while hospitalized, I was eatingsome popcorn when suddenly I began to feel thisimmense pain in my stomach. I felt the need to pass
my bowels but could not. Two days later I still could
not and began regurgitating my food. It was
discovered that a large tumor was blocking mybowels. I was immediately sent to surgery.
During the surgery I died. For how long, I cannot
say, but I had no sensation of passing. I went fromlying on the gurney to floating in the air above thedoctors. I watched as they pulled out my intestines,
carefully laying them to the side of my body, and then

they began racing around (I presume in an attempt torevive me). During this, I began rising, and all at once
it seemed as though I knew everything there was toknow. It seemed as if all the mysteries of the world
were being revealed. I understood science, math, life!
Simultaneously, I could see people below me inother rooms; I saw my grandmother and great-aunt
crying outside the operating area. I saw other patients
being treated in other surgery rooms. I saw people
outside the hospital. I saw so much, and I continued
to rise.
Then as instantly as I rose, I was instantly
present within something that resembled a cloud. I
don’t say it was a cloud, but it was bright, white, andsoft. I felt the total embrace of love. And I knew I wasin a place of great safety and warmth. I saw what
could have been angels, three. They had great
peace about them, and they were part of this “cloud,”as if attached directly to it. They didn’t say anything tome, yet I felt the grandness of them and their joy. I
was happy, peaceful, and desired to stay amongst
them.
Suddenly a large hand came towards me. I can’teven express its size as everything there was morethan words could express. All I know is that it was anonthreatening hand, and it glowed with an
overpowering light. Then I heard a voice that seemed
soft yet authoritative tell me, “My child, go back, foryou have much work left to do!” I was instantly back in
my body. Instantly! When I awoke, I told the doctors
what I saw them doing to me during the operation.
They were amazed at my precise [description] of theirwork. Actually, they had removed two and a half feetof my intestines. Still, they didn’t believe the story. I
also remember feeling angry that I had to return. I
knew that I was healed. The doctors were awestruck tofind that after only one chemo treatment the tumors
were gone. And that treatment was given against mywill as I was too young for them to hear my protest.
And thirty-seven years later, I am still here.
Another story of unexplained healing came from a
man named Denver who lived in Florida. Denver wasin the hospital with blood clots in his lungs, a very
dangerous condition that often leads to death. As
Denver struggled to breathe, the doctor made thedecision to give him high doses of blood thinner.
Although the blood thinner began to treat the clots,
another equally serious problem arose. Denver’s
stomach and other organs began to hemorrhage dueto the large dose of blood thinner.
Denver’s mother was told that the young man had
only a 15 percent chance of surviving. During the night
while hovering close to death, Denver had a neardeath experience. In this NDE he was asked if he was“prepared to leave.” He declined, and continued tocling to life. The doctor decided to move him to alarger regional hospital, where his chances of survival
were greater.
Denver was rushed to the regional hospital. He
tells the rest of the story:

When I arrived forty-five minutes later at the regional
hospital, and the expert began running X-rays andother tests, he called the doctor in Niceville very
frustrated. The [Niceville] doctor quoted him as
saying, “Doctor, you send me a dying boy needingsurgery, and I’ll be damned if I can find a thing wrong
with him!” The doctor was floored! Later during myfollow-up visits to see the doctor after being released
from ICU, the doctor kept repeating that he saw noother alternative but to call this a miracle from God!
Many such examples of apparent unexplained
healings associated with near-death experiences havebeen shared with NDERF. Time and again the people
who write these case studies use words like miracleor I was healed.
One of the best documented examples of healing
following a near-death experience was reported by Dr.
Penny Sartori and associates.8 The NDE she
described was part of a prospective study of neardeath experiences. This case report was remarkable
both for the accurate out-of-body observations during
the NDE and also for the inexplicable healing following
the NDE.
The patient in this case report had emergency
surgery for bowel cancer. As he was recovering fromsurgery, his clinical condition worsened and hebecame comatose. While deeply unconscious, andwith his eyes closed, he had a near-death experience.
His NDE included an out-of-body experience withdetailed observations of events going on around his
body. After his recovery he described what he saw
happening around him while he was unconscious. His
OBE observations were confirmed as accurate bythose caring for him during his near-death experience.
This near-death experiencer had been born withcerebral palsy. As a result, he had a contracted anddeformed hand, which throughout his life he had notbeen able to open completely. After his NDE he wasable to open and use his hand for the first time in hislife. This medically inexplicable healing wascorroborated by his family and health-care team.
I don’t know how these healings take place oreven if they take place as a result of the NDEs. I doknow, however, that a significant number of NDErs
express a belief that they were healed during their
NDE, which is reason for further research. Exploringthese seemingly miraculous healings further will be adirection I take in the future.

Psychic Changes
There are many people who have a hard time
accepting anything labeled “psychic.” I can understandthis, as I felt that way before I started my research intonear-death experiences. However, as I read more
about NDEs I became aware of dozens of scholarly
articles that described psychic NDE aftereffects.9
People who have near-death experiences often
believe they have increased psychic abilities following
their experience. These are not people who gaze into
crystal balls or dress like gypsies. Rather, they arepeople who are ordinary to the core but with one great
difference: their ordinary life has been touched by an
extraordinary NDE. Following their NDEs, many
describe such psychic abilities as empathy (the ability
to tell how another person feels), intuition, or
precognitive skills.
In the NDERF study, 45.0 percent of thosesurveyed answered “Yes” to the question “Did you
have any psychic, paranormal, or other special gifts
following the experience you did not have prior to theexperience?” Of the remaining, 19.1 percent weren’tsure, and 35.9 percent answered “No.” Although apositive response of 45 percent is astounding, I think
the actual number might be higher. Those NDErs who
were small children at the time of the experience may
not know if their current psychic gifts were present
before the NDE. Also, some NDErs describe
dramatically heightened psychic abilities immediately
after their experiences that diminish in a variable
amount of time.
Here are but a few of the many stories we havecollected at NDERF. These examples will give you anidea of some of the psychic abilities described by
NDErs.
Romona was in an aluminum boat that slammed
into a barge and flipped over. Romona was trappedbeneath the barge. Struggling to reach the surface,
she ran out of air and felt herself leave her body. She
said that she felt “fine and so happy” in this out-of-bodystate.
Rescued and resuscitated with CPR, Romonadiscovered that she had psychic aftereffects. One ofher best examples came on the telephone with hersister. Romona tells the story:

My brother-in-law, [Bob], died in 2000. He did not
believe in the afterlife. I was on the phone with mysister, [Marsha], who lived in Walnut Creek,
California. All at once I only could see yellow, likesomeone put a yellow sheet of paper in front of myeyes. Then it was gone, and then my den appeared
to be filled with bubbles, thousands of bubbles. This
kept happening—the color yellow then gone,thousands of bubbles then gone. Then I had a voicein my head saying, “Tell her, tell her, tell her.” It
became so loud I couldn’t even hear my sister
anymore. I then said, “Marsha, I have to tell you
something. It makes no sense, I am not crazy, but I
have to tell you: yellow bubbles.” She couldn’t believe
it. She was happy, so happy. She then told me onenight that she and…Bob watched a movie called
Houdini. Bob was making a comment of there being
no afterlife. Marsha told him she would think of asecret word…and whoever went first—if there was anafterlife—to somehow get the secret word to the one
left here. To my surprise those were the secret words:
yellow bubbles. She picked them because it made nosense; nobody would ever just blurt out those words.
Marcia was under a one-and-a-half-ton structure
when it collapsed. Marcia had an out-of-bodyexperience, and then her late father and sister
appeared to her. Her sister had died of brain cancer
several years earlier and her father had died aboutfour months earlier. Her father kept telling her tobreathe.
Marcia survived. After her NDE Marcia had
premonitions about future events. This is one of themore striking:I woke one morning and told my husband that afriend and business associate of my husband’s had
died. I had talked to this man on the phone at somepoint over a fifteen-year period, but I [had] never met

him. He wasn’t someone that I thought about. I justmatter-offactly told my husband that he died. A shorttime later my husband got a phone call, and a friend
told him that this man had died…. When my husband
got the phone call and the man told him who had
died, my husband remarked that he already knew
about it. Then my husband remembered that it was I
who had told him. I have had other premonitions
about events that were to happen, but they weren’t
life-shattering things. I just knew different things thatwere to happen prior to them actually happening.
I love the casual way in which NDErs tell these
psychic events. As one NDEr told my coauthor, “I havecome to realize that we all have the ability to ‘read’ one
another. There is just something about the near-deathexperience that triggers that ability in us.”10
Although there has been a substantial amount ofresearch into
psychic
near-death-experience
aftereffects, few researchers have directly tested thepsychic abilities of NDErs. This will certainly be an
important area for future NDE research.
If I have discovered anything by starting NDERF,
it’s that near-death experiences touch on a lifetime ofquestions that, to answer one, leads to a dozen more.

Decreased Fear of Death
Few of us experience mortality as directly as dopeople who have had near-death experiences. Yet
despite having the frightful experience of nearly dying,most NDErs do not report an increase in their fear ofdeath, but rather a decrease in their fear or a loss ofthe fear altogether. This is a consistent finding in a
number of previously published studies.11 Here, in
brief, is what NDErs have to say about death:
Catherine, who nearly died after surgery,reported,

I had always been terrified of death, of oblivion. I no
longer fear death.
Lauren was felt by the EMS to be dead on arrival
after a severe accident. She wrote,

I am no longer afraid of death. I know now in my soulthat there is so much more after life. I feel that once I
have learned what it is I am supposed to learn or atask that I must complete, that I will be rewarded with alife after death!
Sharla, who nearly died of respiratory arrest,
wrote,The most significant part of the experience is that
there is (to me) nothing to fear of death.
The fear of death is one of humanity’s mostpowerful sources of anxiety. There are many people
today who are so fearful of death that they are unableto fully live their lives. For these people, this fear may
extend beyond the fear of their own death; they may
fret endlessly about the life and health of others. The
message NDErs share, including their consistentdescription of reduced or absent fear of death, is so
powerful that I am not surprised when people tell methat their personal fear of death was diminished just byreading accounts of near-death experiences.
Those who have a near-death experience may stillfear the actual process of dying. Dying often involves
discomfort, though modern medicine has madetremendous progress in easing that discomfort. Dying
also involves a separation from our loved ones and allthat is familiar in the world. However, the great majority
of NDErs believe they experienced firsthand what lies
beyond death. And what they experienced beyond
death’s door leaves many of them fearless when they
think about death. For most NDErs, their lack of fear ofdeath is associated with a conviction that death is not
final and that a wonderful afterlife is real.
In its own way, the near-death experience has ahealing effect on most of the people who have it.
People who have a near-death experience may neverfear death again. Although they don’t necessarily
become more religious, NDErs often state that they
become more spiritual, and with that change comes abelief in the sacredness of life and a special
knowledge that serves to guide them the rest of theirlives.

Increased Belief in an Afterlife
People who have a near-death experience are
generally convinced that after bodily death a wonderfulafterlife awaits them. They believe they personallyexperienced the afterlife, and they are convinced of its
reality. At the NDERF website, people who had anear-death experience have been quite open indescribing the afterlife they encountered. We havehundreds of descriptions of what many NDErs
describe as “heavenly realms.” When these are readconsecutively, they provide an impressionistic view ofwhat the heaven of NDEs looks like. Here are a few
examples to illustrate what I mean.
David, who had a near-death experience after
passing out in the hospital, wrote,

The prairie or meadow in which I found myself
walking, the feeling of happiness [that] every blade ofgrass gave off, that was definitely beautiful, special,and extraordinary.
Robin, who had a near-death experience during aheart attack, reported,

Flatlined—went to a place that was beautifully lit—likethe sunshine but much prettier and more golden(kind of like sepia tones). Seemed like aneighborhood, and I was shown around to all thepeople I loved and missed, and they were all sohappy.
Kristin, after a seizure that stopped her heart andbreathing, reported,I feel so tacky saying this since it’s so stereotypical,
but there was always a bright white light, and I’d go toit, and once I got there, and I touched it, everything
was beautifully white and scintillating and warm; itsmelled sweet and inviting, like cupcakes or warm
vanilla sugar. There were these…“unearthly beings,”
and they talked to me.
Ruben, whose near-death experience took place
during cardiac arrest, reported,

At first I was floating, surrounded by a very white andbrilliant light, and as I descended I noticed that thewhite light was not just light: there were very, very
white clouds [that] I was passing through. Aftercoming through the clouds I found myself
descending toward a very beautiful landscape, withgreen meadows, rivers, butterflies, and birds. I was
moving toward a hill with a tree on top. The sensation
I felt I cannot express in words, but it was so
wonderfully tranquilizing that the desire is there to
return and feel it over again.
It is the experiencing of this kind of heavenly
reality that contributes to the NDErs’ belief in theafterlife and to their reduced fear of death—and, forthat matter, their reduced fear of life. When NDErs
have finally processed their experience enough to talkabout it, they may share their experience to help otherswho are grieving, feel hopeless, or doubt an afterlife.
Here are some touching and inspiring accounts from
NDErs who reached out to others in order to share
their conviction that the afterlife does indeed exist, andthe profound consolation this brought to others whose
loved ones had died.
Mark experienced sudden cardiac death and had
a full-blown NDE in which he left his body and went to aheavenly realm. When he returned to life, Mark was
blessed with enough psychic abilities to be able to“read” some people. One of the first to experience his
newly acquired abilities was a nurse at the office of his
cardiologist:

I saw a nurse practitioner in August about threemonths after. She had all my records and said to me,“You sure had some experience!” I could tell she wasin a hurting way, so after she examined me, I sharedwith her what I saw and felt. She told me what I had
just told her was reassuring since she had lost her
father less than a year before. She thanked me forsharing it with her and I left. I saw her again twomonths later. She had turned from a very mousy,
timid person [in]to a [person with a] well-dressed,
confident look. Not cocky! Self-confident, a broad
smile on her face, a cheery attitude. She wanted so tohelp me with my problems, did so, and as I was
leaving the doctor’s office she looked into my eyes,
past them to my soul, and said simply, “Thank you.”That is one of the reasons I believe I was sent back.
Anne nearly died after hemorrhaging blood a few

days after childbirth. Her experience, which involved
drifting up a tunnel and moving toward a light, wassomething she kept pretty much to herself. Then she
got word that her father was dying and went to visit him
in Florida. Realizing she would not see him again,
Anne told him of her experience.

The day I left to go home to my family I sat on his
bed, and as we said good-bye, both knowing it would
be the last time we would see each other, I told him of
my experience in order to ease his transition. He
thanked me profusely and said that it helped takeaway the fear.
Belief in an afterlife is one of the most common
NDE aftereffects. It’s easy to understand why NDErs
generally believe there is an afterlife. They believe
they’ve been there. They may have experienced
realms that are magnificent beyond anything on earth.
And all the other NDE elements, including the out-ofbody experience, encountering mystical light,
reviewing one’s life, and reuniting with deceased loved
ones, point to a continuing existence in joy and beauty
that transcends physical death.
Near-death experiencers are virtually unanimousthat the afterlife is for all of us, not just for those whohave had NDEs. This is certainly consistent with theiruniform description of the afterlife as a loving andinclusive realm, a realm for us all.
For decades NDEs have been a message ofhope to millions of people that there is an afterlife forboth themselves and their loved ones. With the latest

scientific NDE research, including the new findings
from the NDERF study, this message of hope about
the afterlife is becoming a promise.

A PIECE OF THE AFTERLIFE
The NDERF study has revealed a lot about theaftereffects of near-death experiences. It has shown
the resilience of the human spirit in that facing death is
not the end but the beginning. Near-death experiencesusually lead to a richer, more fulfilling life. They aretransformative in a myriad of ways, inspiring love,
creating empathy, and connecting those who
experience them more deeply to others. As a neardeath experiencer named Colin said, “I have beenable to develop deep and fulfilling friendships. I feel theneed for friendship much more than I did before theexperience. I am able to be a better friend.”
The fact that near-death experiences bring abouttransformation is powerful evidence of the afterlife. For
me it’s evidence that those who step briefly into theafterlife bring back a piece of it when they return.

Conclusion

After considering the strength of the evidence, I am
absolutely convinced that an afterlife exists. I
encourage each reader to consider the evidence andcome to your own conclusion. A tool to help you
determine how convincing you believe the NDE
evidence is for an afterlife may be found on the
NDERF website at our page exploring evidence of theafterlife (http://www.nderf.org/afterlife).
Nine lines of evidence for the existence of anafterlife have been presented. This evidence would be
extraordinary even if NDErs were fully awake and alert
at the time of their experiences. But they’re not. People
who have near-death experiences are generally
unconscious or clinically dead at the time of theirexperience. It is medically inexplicable that they would
h a v e any conscious experiences, let alone
experiences so packed with evidence pointing to anafterlife. To review, these are the nine lines ofevidence:

1. The level of consciousness and alertness duringnear-death experiences is usually greater than thatexperienced during everyday life, even though NDEs
generally occur while a person is unconscious or
clinically dead. The elements in NDEs generally
follow a consistent and logical order.
2. What NDErs see and hear in the out-of-body stateduring their near-death experiences is generally
realistic and often verified later by the NDEr or others
as real.
3. Normal or supernormal vision occurs in near-deathexperiences among those with significantly impaired
vision or even legal blindness. Several NDErs who
were blind from birth have reported highly visual neardeath experiences.
4. Typical near-death experiences occur undergeneral anesthesia at a time when conscious
experience should be impossible.
5. Life reviews in near-death experiences include real
events that took place in the NDErs’ lives, even if theevents were forgotten.
6. When NDErs encounter beings they knew fromtheir earthly life, they are virtually always deceased,
usually deceased relatives.
7. The near-death experiences of children, including
very young children, are strikingly similar to those ofolder children and adults.
8. Near-death experiences are remarkably consistentaround the world. NDEs from non-Western countries
appear similar to typical Western NDEs.
9. It is common for NDErs to experience changes intheir lives as aftereffects following NDEs. Aftereffects
are often powerful and lasting, and the changes follow
a consistent pattern.
The NDERF study is the largest scientific study ofnear-death experience ever reported, and it provides
exceptional new scientific evidence for the reality of
NDEs and their consistent message of an afterlife. Any
one of these nine lines of evidence individually issignificant evidence for the reality of near-deathexperiences and the afterlife. The combination ofthese nine lines of evidence is so convincing that I
believe it is reasonable to accept the existence of anafterlife. I certainly do.
I’m not alone in concluding that near-deathexperiences are evidence of the afterlife. It’s easy to
see why those who have a near-death experience
accept the reality of their NDE and generally accept
the existence of an afterlife. It makes sense thatimportant information about what happens when we
die would come from those who actually did nearly die.
The most important findings of the NDERF study
have been corroborated by scores of prior scholarly
NDE studies over more than thirty years. This certainly
helps validate the remarkable NDERF study findings.
This research has profound implications forscience. The findings of the NDERF and other NDE
studies are consistent with the conclusion that there is
far more to consciousness and memory than can be
explained solely by our physical brain. I find that
incredibly exciting.
We still have much to learn from the scientificstudy of near-death experiences. Further scientificresearch of NDEs with a variety of methodologies is
encouraged, and NDERF will help in any way we can.
Anyone who has had a near-death experience isencouraged to share their account with NDERF no
matter what the content of the NDE was.
The arguments of skeptics have consistently
failed to explain how near-death experiences occur
and why their content is so consistent. There is noearthly experience that consistently reproduces any
part of the near-death experience.
There are many who accept the reality of NDEs

and want to look deeper into their meaning. At NDERF
we are already studying this. Our preliminary findings
indicate that there is much more to be learned from
NDEs. We are also investigating events other thannear-death experiences that suggest an afterlife andmay be scientifically studied. Updates on the ongoing
NDERF research and additional material related tothis book can be found at the NDERF website(http://www.nderf.org/evidence).
This book has important implications for religion.
The great religions have always spoken to the belief in
God and an afterlife. The evidence of near-deathexperiences points to an afterlife and a universe
guided by a vastly loving intelligence. Near-deathexperiences consistently reveal that death is not an
end but rather a transition to an afterlife. This is a
profoundly inspiring thought for us all and for our loved
ones. I hope that this book helps to promote such an
encouraging message.
For me personally, I’m showing more love toothers now than before I started my near-deathexperience studies. My understanding of near-deathexperiences has made me a better doctor. I face life
with more courage and confidence. I believe NDErs
really do bring back a piece of the afterlife. When
NDErs share their remarkable experiences, I believe a
piece of the afterlife, in some mysterious way,
becomes available to us all.

NotesFurther details about updated research findings, abibliography, frequently asked questions, errata,
NDERF study methodology, and a variety of othertopics related to the material presented in this bookareavailable
on
the
NDERF
website(http://www.nderf.org/evidence).
The following is not intended to be acomprehensive listing of all references relevant toeach chapter. The bibliography available from a link at
http://www.nderf.org/evidence will provide an updated
listing of the major sources of information about neardeath experience and related topics.

Introduction
1. If each of two lines of evidence from near-deathexperiences (NDEs) is 90 percent convincing of theexistence of an afterlife, then the combination ofthese two lines of evidence may be considered asfollows: The probability that either of these lines of
NDE evidence individually is not convincing of theexistence of an afterlife is 10 percent, or 0.1. The
probability that the combination of these two lines of
NDE evidence is not convincing of the existence ofan afterlife is (0.1 x 0.1), or 0.01, which is 1 percent.
Thus the combination of two lines of NDE evidence,each of which is 90 percent convincing of theexistence of an afterlife, gives 100 percent minus 1

percent, or 99 percent confidence that the afterlife isconvincingly felt to exist.
2. Raymond Moody, Life After Life (Atlanta:
Mockingbird Books, 1975).
3. To expand on the inclusion criteria for the 613 NDErs
quoted throughout the book: The experience had todescribe a single NDE and be shared in English on
the English version of the NDERF survey. Secondperson NDE accounts were excluded. These 613
consecutive NDEs that met all criteria were shared
between October 2004 and December 2008. Further
details regarding the survey methodology can befound at http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
4. The current version of the NDERF survey asks allquestions that comprise the NDE Scale. The NDE
Scale is described in detail by B. Greyson, “TheNear-Death Experience Scale: Construction,
Reliability, and Validity,” Journal of Nervous andMental Disease 171 (1983): 369–75.
5. There is some variability in what NDE researchersconsider the elements of a near-death experience tobe. The twelve elements presented here wereconsistently observed in the NDERF study.
6. Four other major studies used the NDE Scale tostudy the frequency of NDE elements: B. Greyson,“The Near-Death Experience Scale” B. Greyson,“Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death
Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit,” General
Hospital Psychiatry 25 (2003): 269–76; A. Pacciolla,“The Near-Death Experience: A Study of Its Validity,”
Journal of Near-Death Studies 14 (1996): 179–85;
J. Schwaninger, P. R. Eisenberg, K. B. Schechtman,
and A. N. Weiss, “A Prospective Analysis of NearDeath Experiences in Cardiac Arrest Patients,”

Journal of Near-Death Studies 20 (2002): 215–32.
The preceding four studies had a combined total of
136 NDErs.
7. A discussion of frightening NDEs is beyond thescope of this book. Those interested in this topic are
encouraged to read the presentation of frightening
NDEs at the link on the NDERF website at
http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
8. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S.
Religious Landscape Survey, Summary of Key
Findings,
http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religiouslandscape-study-key-findings.pdf.

Chapter 1: First Encounters
1. R. Blacher, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream…,”
Journal of the American Medical Association 242,
no. 21 (1979): 2291.
2. M. Sabom, “The Near-Death Experience,” Journal of
the American Medical Association 244, no. 1(1980): 29–30.
3.
4. R. Moody, Life After Life (Atlanta: Mockingbird
Books, 1975).
5. R. Moody, Reflections on Life After Life (New York:
Stackpole Books, 1977), 113.
6. R. Moody and P. Perry, Coming Back: A Psychiatrist
Explores Past-Life Journeys (New York: Bantam,
1991), 11.
7. R. Moody and P. Perry, The Light Beyond (NewYork: Bantam Books, 1988), 62.
8. The discussion between Sheila (not her real name)and me took place over a quarter of a century ago. Icannot recall the exact details of this discussion.
Sheila’s NDE is presented as accurately as I canremember it. I cannot be as confident of the details of
Sheila’s NDE as I am of the other NDEs presented inthis book from written accounts shared directly by
NDErs with NDERF.

Chapter 2: Journey Toward Understanding
1. B. Eadie, Embraced by the Light (New York:
Bantam, 1992).
2. G. Gallup Jr. and W. Proctor, Adventures in

Immortality: A Look Beyond the Threshold of Death(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982). There is significant
uncertainty regarding the prevalence of NDEs, but
this study’s estimate of 5 percent is widely quoted inspite of its methodological issues.
3. A number of published studies directly compared thereliability of Internet surveys with “pencil-and-paper”
surveys. The general consensus of multiple studies
suggests that Internet surveys are as reliable as“pencil-and-paper” surveys. A detailed discussion ofthis topic is found through a link on the page
http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
4. D. Karnofsky and J. Burchenal, “The Clinical
Evaluation of Chemotherapeutic Agents in Cancer,”in Evaluation of Chemotherapeutic Agents, ed. C.
M. MacLeod (New York: Columbia University Press,
1949), 191–205.
5. NDErs sharing with NDERF may request that their
NDEs not be posted on the NDERF website. Less
than 5 percent of the NDErs request this. This helps
assure that the near-death-experience accounts
posted on the NDERF website are fullyrepresentative of all near-death experiences sharedwith NDERF. A detailed discussion of how
representative the NDEs shared with NDERF are of
all NDEs is at a link on the page
http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
6. A few of the NDEs that needed to be presented inthis book were cases in which we could not contact
the NDErs. When these NDEs are presented they areparaphrased, for ethical reasons. All paraphrased
NDEs in this book are introduced as paraphrased
accounts. All paraphrased NDEs are posted on the
NDERF website in their original form.

Chapter 3: Proof #1: Lucid Death
1. Following a cardiac arrest, EEG changes consistent
with decreased blood flow to the brain are seen in
about six seconds. The EEG flatlines in ten to twenty
seconds. See J. W. DeVries, P. F. A. Bakker, G. H.
Visser, J. C. Diephuis, and A. C. van Huffelen,“Changes in Cerebral Oxygen Uptake and Cerebral
Electrical Activity During Defibrillation Threshold
Testing,” Anesthesiology and Analgesia 87 (1998):
16–20.
2. Near-death experiences associated with cardiac
arrest have been reported in dozens of previously
published studies. Over one hundred NDEs occurring
during cardiac arrest have been reported in these fivestudies alone: M. Sabom, Recollections of Death: A
Medical Investigation (New York: Simon & Schuster,1982); P. van Lommel, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and
I. Elfferich, “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of
Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the
Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45; S.

Parnia, D. G. Waller, R. Yeates, and P. Fenwick, “A
Qualitative and Quantitative Study of the Incidence,
Features and Aetiology of Near Death Experiencesin Cardiac Arrest Survivors,” Resuscitation 48(2001): 149–56; J. Schwaninger, P. R. Eisenberg, K.
B. Schechtman, and A. N. Weiss, “A Prospective
Analysis of Near-Death Experiences in Cardiac
Arrest Patients,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 20(2002): 215–32; B. Greyson, “Incidence andCorrelates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac
Care Unit,” General Hospital Psychiatry 25 (2003):
269–76.
3. B. Greyson, E. W. Kelly, and E. F. Kelly, “Explanatory
Models for Near-Death Experiences,” in The

Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Yearsof Investigation, ed. J. Holden, B. Greyson, and D.
James (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009),
229.
4. Prior NDE studies consistently describe enhanced
mental functioning during the experience. Here are
two illustrative studies: J. E. Owens, E. W. Cook, and
I. Stevenson, “Features of ‘Near-Death Experience’ in
Relation to Whether or Not Patients Were Near
Death,” Lancet 336 (1990): 1175–77; E. W. Kelly, B.
Greyson, and E. F. Kelly, “Unusual Experiences Near
Death and Related Phenomena,” in Irreducible Mind:
Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, by E. F.
Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso,
and B. Greyson (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,2007), 367–421, quote on 386.
5. J. Long and J. Long, “A Comparison of NDEs
Occurring Before and After 1975: Results from a
Web Survey of Near Death Experiencers,” Journal of
Near-Death Studies 22, no. 1 (2003): 21–32.

6. G. K. Athappilly, B. Greyson, and I. Stevenson, “DoPrevailing Societal Models Influence Reports of NearDeath Experiences? A Comparison of Accounts
Reported Before and After 1975,” Journal of
Nervous and Mental Disease 194 (2006): 218.

Chapter 4: Proof #2: Out of Body
1. M. Sabom, Recollections of Death: A Medical
Investigation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
2. P. Sartori, “A Prospective Study of NDEs in an
Intensive Therapy Unit,” Christian Parapsychologist
16, no. 2 (2004): 34–40. Results of this study werelater presented in further detail: P. Sartori, The Near-

Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care
Patients: A Five Year Clinical Study (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).
3. J. Holden, “Veridical Perception in Near-Death
Experiences,” in The Handbook of Near-Death
Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, ed. J.
Holden, B. Greyson, and D. James (Westport, CT:
Praeger Publishers, 2009).
4. K. Clark, “Clinical Interventions with Near-Death
Experiencers,” in The Near-Death Experience:
Problems, Prospects, Perspectives, ed. B. Greyson
and C. P. Flynn (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas,
1984), 242–55.
5. K. Augustine, “Does Paranormal Perception Occur in
Near-Death Experiences?” Journal of Near-Death
Studies 25, no. 4 (2007): 203–36; Sharp, K. C. “TheOther Shoe Drops: Commentary on ‘Does
Paranormal Perception Occur in Near-Death
Experiences?’” Journal of Near-Death Studies 25,
no. 4 (2007): 245–50.

6. P. van Lommel, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I.
Elfferich, “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of
Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the
Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45.
7. For more information on the AWARE study, see
University of Southampton Media Centre, “World’s
Largest Ever Study of Near-Death Experiences,”
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2008/sep/08_165.shtml.
8. People experiencing cardiac arrest are usuallyamnesic or confused regarding events occurring
immediately prior to or after the cardiac arrest. Hereare three illustrative studies: M. J. Aminoff, M. M.
Scheinman, J. C. Griffin, and J. M. Herre,“Electrocerebral Accompaniments of Syncope
Associated with Malignant Ventricular Arrhythmias,”
Annals of Internal Medicine 108 (1988): 791–96; P.
van Lommel, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I. Elfferich,“Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac
Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,”
Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45; S. Parnia and P.
Fenwick, “Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest:
Visions of a Dying Brain or Visions of a New Scienceof Consciousness,” Resuscitation 52, no. 1 (2002):
5–11.
9. There have been multiple reports from other NDE
researchers of NDErs observing earthly events far
from their physical bodies and beyond any possible
physical sensory awareness. Here are two studies
containing fifteen NDEs with corroboration of the
NDErs’ remote observations by others: E. W. Cook,
B. Greyson, and I. Stevenson, “Do Any Near-Death
Experiences Provide Evidence for the Survival of
Human Personality After Death? Relevant Featuresand Illustrative Case Reports,” Journal of ScientificExploration 12 (1998): 377–406; E. W. Kelly, B.
Greyson, and I. Stevenson, “Can Experiences Near
Death Furnish Evidence of Life After Death?” Omega
40, no. 4 (1999–2000): 513–19.

Chapter 5: Proof #3: Blind Sight
1. K. Ring and S. Cooper, “Near-Death and Out-of-Body
Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent
Eyeless Vision,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 16(1998): 101–47. Results of this study were later
presented in further detail: K. Ring and S. Cooper,

Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body
Experiences in the Blind (Palo Alto, CA: William
James Center for Consciousness Studies, Institute ofTranspersonal Psychology, 1999).
2. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 25.
3. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 46–47.
4. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 41–42.
5. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 151.
6. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 153.
7. Ring and Cooper, Mindsight, 157, 158, 163.

Chapter 6: Proof #4: Impossibly Conscious
1. B. Greyson, E. W. Kelly, and E. F. Kelly, “Explanatory
Models for Near-Death Experiences,” in The

Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Yearsof Investigation, ed. J. Holden, B. Greyson, and D.
James (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009),
226.
2. J. C. Eccles, Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the
Self (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 241.
3. Awakening (full or partial) under general anesthesia

probably occurs in 1 to 3 in 1,000 cases: T. Heier and
P. Steen, “Awareness in Anaesthesia: Incidence,
Consequences and Prevention,” Acta
Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica 40 (1996): 1073–
86; R. H. Sandin, G. Enlund, P. Samuelsson, and C.
Lennmarken, “Awareness During Anaesthesia: A
Prospective Case Study,” Lancet 355 (2000): 707–
11.
4. The experience of anesthesia awakening is very
unlike what is described in NDEs: J. E. Osterman, J.
Hopper, W. J. Heran, T. M. Keane, and B. A. van derKolk, “Awareness Under Anesthesia and theDevelopment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,”General Hospital Psychiatry 23 (2001): 198–204; P.
H. Spitelli, M. A. Holmes, and K. B. Domino,“Awareness During Anesthesia,” Anesthesiology
Clinics of North America 20 (2002): 555–70.
5. K. R. Nelson, M. Mattingley, S. A. Lee, and F. A.
Schmitt, “Does the Arousal System Contribute to
Near Death Experience?” Neurology 66 (2006):
1003–9.
6. J. Long and J. M. Holden, “Does the Arousal System
Contribute to Near-Death and Out-of-Body
Experiences? A Summary and Response,” Journalof Near-Death Studies 25, no. 3 (2007): 135–69.
This article is available through a link at
http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
7. Eccles, Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self,
242.

Chapter 7: Proof #5: Perfect Playback
1. Personal communication from Raymond Moody, MD,
to Paul Perry.

2. J. A. Long, “Life Review, Changed Beliefs, Universal
Order and Purpose, and the Near-Death Experience:
Part 4, Soulmates,” Near-Death Experience
Research Foundation (NDERF),
http://www.nderf.org/purpose_lifereview.htm.
3. S. Blackmore, Dying to Live: Near-Death
Experiences (New York: Prometheus, 1993).
4. S. Blackmore, “Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of
the Body?” Skeptical Inquirer 16 (1991): 34–45,
available at Susan Blackmore’s website,
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/si91nde.html.
5. E. W. Kelly, B. Greyson, and E. F. Kelly, “Unusual
Experiences Near Death and Related Phenomena,”
in E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M.
Grosso, and B. Greyson, Irreducible Mind: Toward a
Psychology for the 21st Century (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 382.
6. Kelly, Greyson, and Kelly, “Unusual Experiences,”382.
7. O. Blanke, S. Ortigue, T. Landis, and M. Seeck,“Stimulating Illusory Own Body Perceptions,” Nature
419 (2002): 269–70.
8. O. Blanke, T. Landis, L. Spinelli, and M. Seeck, “Outof-Body Experience and Autoscopy of NeurologicalOrigin,” Brain 127 (2004): 243–58.
9. J. Holden, J. Long, and J. MacLurg, “Out-of-Body
Experiences: All in the Brain?” Journal of NearDeath Studies 25, no. 2 (2006): 99–107.
10. E. Rodin, “Comments on ‘A Neurobiological Modelfor Near-Death Experiences,’” Journal of Near-Death
Studies 7 (1989): 256.
11. Studies document that experiences associated withelectrical brain stimulation and seizures are unlike
NDEs: P. Gloor, A. Olivier, L. F. Quesney, F.

Andermann, and S. Horowitz, “The Role of the Limbic
System in Experiential Phenomena of Temporal
Lobe Epilepsy,” Annals of Neurology 12 (1982):
129–44; O. Devinsky, E. Feldmann, K. Burrowes, and
E. Bromfield, “Autoscopic Phenomena with
Seizures,” Archives of Neurology 46 (1989): 1080–
88.

Chapter 8: Proof #6: Family Reunion
1. E. W. Kelly, “Near-Death Experiences with Reports of
Meeting Deceased People,” Death Studies 25(2001): 229–49.
2. In a large number of NDEs in the NDERF study, theNDEr encounters a being during the NDE that may
seem familiar but that she or he does not recognize.
The NDEr may later recognize the being theyencountered as a deceased family member, often
when looking at old family pictures after the NDE.
This has been described by other NDE researchers:
P. van Lommel, “About the Continuity of Our
Consciousness,” in Brain Death and Disorders ofConsciousness, ed. C. Machado and D. A.
Shewmon (New York: Springer, 2004), 115–32; E. F.
Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso,
and B. Greyson, Irreducible Mind: Toward a
Psychology for the 21st Century (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 391.
3. In hallucinations, living people are more likely to be
seen than deceased individuals: K. Osis and E.
Haraldsson, At the Hour of Death (New York: Avon,
1977).

Chapter 9: Proof #7: From the Mouths of Babes
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Afterlife,”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/afterlife/.
2. Robert T. Carroll, “Near-Death Experience (NDE),”The Skeptic’s Dictionary:
http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html.
3. C. Sutherland, ‘“Trailing Clouds of Glory’: The NearDeath Experiences of Western Children and Teens,”in The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: ThirtyYears of Investigation, ed. J. Holden, B. Greyson,
and D. James (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers,2009), 92, 93.
4. Other studies found that childhood NDEs are far
more similar to adult NDEs than dissimilar:
International Association for Near-Death Studies(IANDS), “Children’s Near-Death Experiences,”
http://www.iands.org/nde_index/ndes/child.html; J.
Holden, J. Long, and J. MacLurg, “Characteristics ofWestern Near-Death Experiencers,” in The

Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Yearsof Investigation, ed. J. Holden, B. Greyson, and D.
James (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009).
5. Holden, Long, and MacLurg, “Characteristics ofWestern Near-Death Experiencers,” 114.
6. W. J. Serdahely, “A Comparison of Retrospective
Accounts of Childhood Near-Death Experiences with
Contemporary Pediatric Near-Death Experience
Accounts,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 9 (1991):
219.
7. B. Greyson, “Consistency of Near-Death Experience
Accounts over Two Decades: Are Reports
Embellished over Time?” Resuscitation 73 (2007):
407–11.
8. P. van Lommel, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I.

Elfferich, “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of
Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the
Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45.
9. M. L. Morse and P. Perry, Transformed by the Light:

The Powerful Effect of Near-Death Experiences on
People’s Lives (New York: Villard Books, 1992).
Chapter 10: Proof #8: Worldwide Consistency
1. The distinction between Western and non-Westerncountries pertinent to the study of NDEs is presented
here: J. Holden, J. Long, and J. MacLurg,“Characteristics of Western Near-Death
Experiencers,” in The Handbook of Near-Death
Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, ed. J.
Holden, B. Greyson, and D. James (Westport, CT:
Praeger Publishers, 2009), 110.
2. For an overview of prior non-Western NDE researchand some of the methodological problems of studying
non-Western NDEs, see A. Kellehear, “Census of
Non-Western Near-Death Experiences to 2005:
Observations and Critical Reflections,” in Handbookof Near-Death Experiences, ed. Holden, Greyson,
and James.
3. Additional results and a more detailed discussion of
the methodology from the NDERF cross-cultural study
may be found at the link at
http://www.nderf.org/evidence.
4. Kellehear, “Census of Non-Western Near-Death
Experiences,” 150.
5. B. Greyson, E. W. Kelly, and E. F. Kelly, “Explanatory
Models for Near-Death Experiences,” in Handbookof Near-Death Experiences, ed. Holden, Greyson,
and James, 215.

6. Holden, Long, and MacLurg, “Characteristics ofWestern Near-Death Experiencers,” 132.
7. It is worth emphasizing how important further
research will be in studying non-Western NDEs andfor the cross-cultural study of NDEs in general. Thereis a need for further high-quality research that
includes publication of representative cross-cultural
NDE narratives. In addition, there needs to be
standard questions about NDE content, such as the
NDE Scale, with the questions carefully translated
into a variety of non-English languages, as NDERF
has done. There also needs to be an effort todetermine if there was a life-threatening event at thetime of the experience. I hope that future crosscultural NDE studies will be able to access NDErs ina variety of ways to help assure that the NDErs
studied are reasonably representative of all NDErs ina particular culture. And, of course, we need to study
many more non-Western NDErs, prospectively if
possible, to include specific non-Western countries
and subcultures. Finding non-Western NDErs insocieties that have little contact with other cultures willbe especially challenging but also especially
important.
8. The archive of non-Western NDEs at NDERF thatwere shared in English or translated into English isfound at http://www.nderf.org/non_western_ndes.htm.

Chapter 11: Proof #9: Changed Lives
1. P. M. H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death
Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens
When We Die (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads
Publishing, 2007), 372.

2. One of the earliest studies of NDE aftereffects was by
K. Ring, Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the
Meaning of the Near-Death Experience (New York:
William Morrow, 1984).
3. Two prospective studies of NDE in cardiac arrest
survivors that assessed aftereffects were P. vanLommel, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I. Elfferich,“Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac
Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,”
Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45; J. Schwaninger, P.
Eisenberg, K. Schechtman, and A. Weiss, “A
Prospective Analysis of Near Death Experiences in
Cardiac Arrest Patients,” Journal of Near-Death
Studies 20 (2002): 215–32.
4. Three studies found an increase in aftereffects
among NDErs whose experiences included moredetailed content, or “depth.” In addition to van
Lommel et al., “Survivors of Cardiac Arrest,” andSchwaninger et al., “Cardiac Arrest Patients,” see G.
Groth-Marnat and R. Summers, “Altered Beliefs,
Attitudes, and Behaviors Following Near-Death
Experiences,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 38,
no. 3 (1998): 110–25.
5. P. van Lommel, “About the Continuity of Our
Consciousness,” in Brain Death and Disorders ofConsciousness, ed. C. Machado and D. A.
Shewmon (New York: Springer, 2004), 118.
6. B. Greyson, “Near-Death Experiences and Antisuicidal Attitudes,” Omega 26 (1992–93): 81–89.
7. D. H. Rosen, “Suicide Survivors: A Follow-Up Studyof Persons Who Survived Jumping from the Golden
Gate and San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridges,”
Western Journal of Medicine 122 (1975): 291.
8. P. Sartori, P. Badham, and P. Fenwick, “AProspectively Studied Near-Death Experience withCorroborated Out-of-Body Perceptions andUnexplained Healing,” Journal of Near-Death
Studies 25 (2006): 69–84.
9. Scholarly literature discussing psychic NDE
aftereffects includes R. L. Kohr, “Near-Death
Experience and Its Relationship to Psi and Various
Altered States,” Theta 10 (1982): 50–53; R. L. Kohr,“Near-Death Experiences, Altered States, and Psi
Sensitivity,” Anabiosis: The Journal for Near-Death
Studies 3 (1983): 157–76; B. Greyson, “Increase in
Psychic Phenomena Following Near-Death
Experiences,” Theta 11 (1983): 26–29; C.
Sutherland, “Psychic Phenomena Following NearDeath Experiences: An Australian Study,” Journal of
Near-Death Studies 8 (1989): 93–102.
10. Personal communication from anonymous near-deathexperiencer to Paul Perry.
11. Some of the studies that found NDErs have adecreased fear of death include R. Moody, Life After

Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon; The
Survival of Bodily Death (Atlanta: Mockingbird
Books, 1975); B. Greyson, “Reduced Death Threat in
Near-Death Experiencers,” Death Studies 16 (1992):
523–36; and P. van Lommel, R. van Wees, V.
Meyers, and I. Elfferich, “Near-Death Experience inSurvivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in
the Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039–45.

About the Author

A nationally recognized expert whose work has beenfeatured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and Coast
to Coast, JEFFREY LONG, MD, is a radiation oncologist
in Houma, Louisiana. Long has served on the board of
directors of The International Association for Near-Death
Studies and is actively involved in NDE research. Dr. Longand his wife, Jody, established the nonprofit Near Death
Experience Research Foundation and a website as aforum for people to share their NDEs and to collectscientific data on this phenomenon. Visit the author onlineat www.nderf.org.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on
your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits
Jacket design: LeVan Fisher Design

Copyright
The Science of Near-Death
Experiences. Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey Long. All rights
EVIDENCE OF THE AFTERLIFE:

reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you havebeen granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right toaccess and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No partof this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded,decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced
into any information storage and retrieval system, in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Long, Jeffrey, M.D.
Evidence of the afterlife : the science of near-deathexperiences / by Jeffrey
Long, with Paul Perry.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0–06–145255–0
1. Near-death experiences. 2. Future life. I. Perry, Paul. II.
Title.
BF1045.N4L66 2010
133.901'3—dc22 2009021251
EPub Edition © December 2009 ISBN: 978-0-06-188773-

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