Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (6 page)
Read Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience Online
Authors: Pim van Lommel
During the night shift the ambulance crew brings in a forty-four-year-old cyanotic [purplish-blue skin discoloration], comatose man. About an hour earlier he had been found in a public park by passers-by, who had initiated heart massage. After admission to the coronary care unit, he receives artificial respiration with a balloon and a mask as well as heart massage and defibrillation. When I want to change the respiration method, when I want to intubate the patient, the patient turns out to have dentures in his mouth. Before intubating him, I remove the upper set of dentures and put it on the crash cart. Meanwhile we continue extensive resuscitation. After approximately ninety minutes, the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he’s still ventilated and intubated, and he remains comatose. In this state he is transferred to the intensive care unit for further respiration. After more than a week in coma the patient returns to the coronary care unit, and I see him when I distribute the medication. As soon as he sees me he says, “Oh, yes, but you, you know where my dentures are.” I’m flabbergasted. Then he tells me, “Yes, you were there when they brought me into the hospital, and you took the dentures out of my mouth and put them on that cart; it had all these bottles on it, and there was a sliding drawer underneath, and you put my teeth there.” I was all the more amazed because I remembered this happening when the man was in a deep coma and undergoing resuscitation. After further questioning, it turned out that the patient had seen himself lying in bed and that he had watched from above how nursing staff and doctors had been busy resuscitating him. He was also able to give an accurate and detailed description of the small room where he had been resuscitated and of the appearance of those present. While watching this scene, he had been terrified that we were going to stop resuscitating and that he would die. And it’s true that we had been extremely negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his very poor condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he had been making desperate but unsuccessful attempts at letting us know that he was still alive and that we should continue resuscitating. He’s deeply impressed by his experience and says he’s no longer afraid of death.
Here is the account of a patient who had an NDE with out-of-body experience caused by complications during surgery:
No, I’d never heard of near-death experiences, and I’d never had any interest in paranormal phenomena or anything of that nature. What happened was that I suddenly became aware of hovering over the foot of the operating table and watching the activity down below around the body of a human being. Soon it dawned on me that this was my own body. So I was hovering over it, above the lamp, which I could see through. I also heard everything that was said: “Hurry up, you bloody bastard” was one of the things I remember them shouting. And even weirder: I didn’t just hear them talk, but I could also read the minds of everybody in the room, or so it seemed to me. It was all quite close, I later learned, because it took four and a half minutes to get my heart, which had stopped, going again. As a rule, oxygen deprivation causes brain damage after three or three and a half minutes. I also heard the doctor say that he thought I was dead. Later he confirmed saying this, and he was astonished to learn that I’d heard it. I also told them that they should mind their language during surgery.
Next up is the account of psychologist Carl G. Jung of his out-of-body experience during his heart attack in 1944. His description of the earth from a great height is remarkable because it is quite consistent with what images from outer space taught us only some forty years ago—decades after Jung’s experience.
It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxydized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse—the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back—as if in the upper left of a map—I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.
Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view—approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.
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This is the story of a woman in a deep coma who was about to be taken off the ventilator because she had been declared brain-dead by her treating neurologist. She had no measurable brain activity.
While she was thought to be in a deep coma without any apparent brain activity, her specialist and husband were having a conversation by her bedside. The specialist predicted that his patient would be a “vegetable” for the rest of her life and asked the husband to consider taking her off the equipment that was keeping her alive. The husband was still hopeful of a recovery, so she was kept on the ventilator. Several months later the woman woke up, despite the somber prognosis. It emerged that she had been able to hear throughout most of her coma and had overheard the conversation between her doctor and husband about passive euthanasia! She said how awful this had been and that while she had been trying to shout that she was still there, that she wanted to live, be with her husband and children, they were discussing her possible demise.
The account of somebody who is color-blind:
I saw the most dazzling colors, which was all the more surprising because I’m color-blind. I can distinguish the primary colors, but pastels all look the same to me. But suddenly I could see them, all kinds of different shades. Don’t ask me to name them because I lack the necessary experience for that.
Next up is the account of Vicki, a woman who was born blind. She was born extremely premature in 1951, after a pregnancy of only twenty-two weeks, and immediately placed in a very primitive incubator and administered 100 percent oxygen. Such a high concentration of oxygen damages the development of the eyeball and optic nerve, which doctors were not aware of in the early days of the incubator. Thousands of premature babies who survived such early incubators went completely blind as a result. Vicki suffered complete atrophy (withering) of the eyeball and optic nerve. The visual cortex, the part of the occipital lobe of the brain that processes light stimuli into images, also fails to develop properly when it receives no light stimuli from the nonfunctioning eyes and optic nerves.
Vicki’s near-death experience is described in Kenneth Ring and S. Cooper’s book, and she was also interviewed at length in the BBC documentary
The Day I Died.
In 1973, when Vicki was twenty-two, she was hurled out of her car in a traffic accident. A basal skull fracture and severe concussion left her in a coma, and she had fractured neck and back vertebrae and a broken leg. She caught a brief glimpse of the car wreck from above (as a blind woman she could see and recognize the smashed Volkswagen van), and later in the emergency room, where she had been taken by ambulance, she was able to see from a position above her body. In the room where she saw a body on a metal gurney, she also spotted two people and could hear them talking and expressing their concern. It was only when she recognized her wedding ring, which of course she knew only by touch, that she realized that it was her own body. And after she had gone up “through the ceiling,” she saw the roof of the hospital and trees.
I’ve never seen anything, no light, no shadows, no nothing. A lot of people ask me if I see black. No, I don’t see black. I don’t see anything at all. And in my dreams I don’t see any visual impressions. It’s just taste, touch, sound, and smell. But no visual impressions of anything.
The next thing I recall I was in Harborview Medical Center and looking down at everything that was happening. And it was frightening because I’m not accustomed to see things visually, because I never had before! And initially it was pretty scary! And then I finally recognized my wedding ring and my hair. And I thought: is this my body down there? And am I dead or what? They kept saying, “We can’t bring her back, we can’t bring her back!” And they were trying to frantically work on this thing that I discovered was my body and I felt very detached from it and sort of “so what?” And I was thinking, what are these people getting so upset about? Then I thought, I’m out of here, I can’t get these people to listen to me. As soon as I thought that I went up through the ceiling as if it were nothing. And it was wonderful to be out there and be free, not worry about bumping into anything, and I knew where I was going. And I heard this sound of wind chimes that was the most incredible sound that I can describe—it was from the very lowest to the very highest tones. As I was approaching this area, there were trees and there were birds and quite a few people, but they were all, like, made out of light, and I could see them, and it was incredible, really beautiful, and I was overwhelmed by that experience because I couldn’t really imagine what light was like. It’s still…a very emotional thing when I talk about this…because there was a point at which…at which I could bring forth any knowledge I wanted to have.
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Vicki goes on to explain that in this other world she was welcomed by some acquaintances. As Ring and Cooper point out:
There are five of them. Debby and Diane were Vicki’s blind school-mates, who had died years before, at ages eleven and six, respectively. In life, they had both been profoundly retarded as well as blind, but here they appeared bright and beautiful, healthy and vitally alive. They were no longer children, but, as Vicki phrased it, “in their prime.” In addition, Vicki reports seeing two of her childhood caretakers, a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Zilk, both of whom had also previously died. Finally, there was Vicki’s grandmother—who had essentially raised Vicki and who had died just two years before this incident. Her grandmother, however, who was further back than the others, was reaching out to hug Vicki.
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Vicki’s experience concludes with a forced reentry into her body:
And then I was sent back and then I went back into my body and it was excruciatingly painful and very heavy and I remember feeling very sick.
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The fact that somebody who has been blind from birth as a result of an atrophied eyeball and optic nerve and who has an undeveloped visual cerebral cortex can nonetheless see people and surroundings raises significant questions. How is it possible that this woman can see, from a position outside and above the body, at a moment when she is in a coma caused by brain damage sustained in a serious traffic accident? She has never been able to see. Besides, she perceives things from a position outside her body. How does she do this? What is responsible for this? How can she be aware of her perceptions during her coma? This is impossible according to current medical knowledge. The stories of Vicki and of other blind people with an NDE are forcing scientists to consider new ideas about the relationship between consciousness and the brain. Vicki’s reported observations could not have been the product of sensory perception or of a functioning (visual) cerebral cortex, nor could they have been a figment of the imagination given their verifiable aspects.
5. A Dark Space
People feel like they are pulled rather abruptly into a dark space, which they describe as an enclosed space, a void, or a well. Approximately 15 percent of people experience their stay in this dark space as frightening.
And then everything went dark, but to my mind I didn’t lose consciousness, because my memories are as vivid as ever…. As I peered into the dark, the color changed from black to deep blue, not dark, but an intense cobalt blue that leaves you speechless….
Soon I found myself in a dark space, a kind of tunnel, which didn’t seem to end. I couldn’t go back, but plowing through it seemed an equally dreadful prospect. Would I ever get out? Or would I suffocate somewhere halfway? You see, there was very little space in this tunnel; it was really tight. After I had spent a long time—more than terrifying—squeezing through this tunnel, a glimmer of light appeared at the end, and after a real struggle I stood, or found myself, in this absolute light, which seemed to envelop me.
The Tunnel Experience
A little pinpoint of light appears in this dark space, and people are often pulled toward it at an incredible speed. They describe it as a tunnel experience.
People move through this dark, occasionally multicolored or spiral-shaped narrow space, sometimes accompanied by visible or invisible beings or by music. They approach the light, which slowly intensifies to become an exceptionally bright but nonblinding light. Eventually people are wholly enveloped by this light and feel completely absorbed by it. This process is coupled with an indescribable feeling of bliss, a sense of unconditional love and acceptance. The journey through the tunnel appears to be a passing from our physical world to another dimension where time and distance no longer play a role. This sensation of moving through a tunnel toward the light has become almost synonymous with near-death experience.