Near-Death Experiences

 

If real, nothing could be more interesting or important than Near Death Experiences.

They say we cannot know what comes after death. For from that bourn, no traveller returns. 

And yet, perhaps some do. We call these “near death experiences” as a matter of definition: if you return, logically, you must not have been dead.

Frustratingly, of course, all accounts are second-hand. This makes them, in principle, as credible as sailors’ tales. If one step more credible, at least, than psychiatric case studies.

People are also naturally going to have some agenda. If your NDE shows you going to hell, are you going to tell everyone? If you’re a believing Christian, aren’t you going to want to claim you met Jesus, whether you did or not? It you are a scoundrel, aren’t you going to want to claim you got a message of “unconditional love”?

What seems common is a sense of leaving your body, of floating about it and looking down at it. People can give details of what was happening around them at this time, although they were supposed to be unconscious and even flatlining. There is a lot of corroborating evidence for this, if not quite proof in scientific terms.

Everyone says that at this point, all pain and discomfort of any kind stops. One has a great feeling of peace.

Then they turn, and see a bright light in front of them. This is featured in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They go toward the light, and the light grows brighter and engulfs them. Some say they merge with the light.

Then they often find themselves in some natural landscape. They meet a relative or friend who has already died. This person may welcome them, or tell them they have to go back.

Someone then “looks into their soul,” many report. This sounds like a moment of judgement. But not a weighing of sin by sin, many say. Rather, it is a discerning of one’s fundamental attitude: loving or unloving. Are you a sheep or a goat? One respondent says he was asked whether he believed in God. He said no.

Many revive before this point. Few seem to get beyond this point. A few report an experience that sounds like hell, or purgatory. More report a place of perfect bliss. But beyond this point I think reports are going to be unreliable.