By Rachel Puryear
For most of us who have lived for a while, we’ve either narrowly escaped death at some point in our lives, or we know someone else who has.
Surviving a close call is pretty unnerving, and often naturally comes with a lot of recovery ahead. Many people shift their perspectives on life after something like this happens; often deciding to do things they’ve put off a long time, rather than wait indefinitely – being reminded once again of just how finite their time on Earth really is.
Sometimes, when people come close to dying, they later report profound experiences. These reported experiences often include seeing – and maybe talking to – deceased loved ones, seeing what appears to be an afterlife – or maybe a gateway to one, bright lights, spiritual figures, seeing what’s happening on Earth – often from a perspective of looking down, and beautiful imagery.
These are known as near-death experiences, or NDE’s. People all over the world, and from lots of different walks of life have reported having these occurrences. People were sharing and documenting these stories at least as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries – but presumably they go all the way back.
Science does offer compelling explanations for these, but many wonder if there’s still any more to them than strictly physiological functions.
So, let’s explore a little more about NDE’s in this post.
Scientific Explanations
A medical explanation for NDE’s is that while a person is near death – perhaps oxygen-deprived, unconscious, heavily medicated, and otherwise impaired – they are prone to hallucinations. They might also misremember events due to brain damage. Additionally, the peaceful feeling commonly reported could be the brain’s way of calming a person while they’re dying.
Furthermore, a dying person’s field of vision narrowing likely causes the sighting of a “tunnel of light” that many people report. Reports of seeing what was going on around them from “up above” while they were unconscious can also be explained by cues that the dying person received even despite being unconscious – such as hearing what’s going on around them – and accordingly creating a hallucination about that.
The extreme emotions associated with these events could also influence how the person views what happened. Surviving a terrible event and then narrowly escaping death understandably makes a strong impression on a person. They couldn’t be blamed for feeling as though there was some kind of divine intervention on their behalf, or that a miracle occurred.
There is likely some ongoing physical and psychological trauma arising out of the event leading to a person coming near death. However, I think it’s important not to dismiss someone’s credibility solely for this reason. It just means that it could take some time for them to process what happened, and they may or may not want to discuss certain aspects of it.
Terminal Lucidity is a Mystery for All
In patients with advanced dementia, there is something called terminal lucidity. This refers to often-observed situations where the end-stage dementia patient will suddenly seem much more lucid and functioning than they’ve been in a long time, and remember things they have not been able to in a long time, perhaps years. This happens a short time before the patient dies, often days or even hours.
In one anecdote, a woman described hearing her grandmother speaking from the other room. The granddaughter was surprised, as the grandmother hadn’t spoken or been able to talk in a while, due to advanced dementia – and was mostly laying in bed by then. When the granddaughter peered into her grandmother’s bedroom, she observed her sitting upright, and conversing with people the granddaughter couldn’t see – including saying names of deceased relatives the grandmother had long forgotten. The grandmother died several hours later.
No one yet has a widely satisfactory explanation for terminal lucidity. Explaining this phenomenon would require unlocking lots more mysteries of the brain.
Is There More to NDE’s?
The scientific explanations for NDE’s make sense, and are compelling. They come from people who have studied and worked their craft for a long time, and know a lot about the subject. I think it’s important to therefore listen carefully to them, and take them seriously.
At the same time, with that being emphatically said; we do also have to wonder if there’s more to it than that – if maybe NDE’s are also a peek into a world beyond this one, and perhaps what happens after we die.
I don’t think it’s necessarily an either/or question – either a a scientific explanation, or a spiritual explanation.
Instead, I think could be a matter of and. That there is a scientific explanation, and also a spiritual explanation. They can co-exist, without necessarily having to be mutually exclusive. That science can explain what’s going on in the brain, while people are also having a spiritual experience.
No one who’s actually died can come back and tell us about it, of course.
But people who have nearly died have shared many of their experiences, and there are places that now – thanks to modern technology – we can learn about these abundantly, in a way that was much less possible for most people during previous ages. See the next section for more on this.
Where Can I Read People’s Accounts of Their Own NDE’s?
Only a century ago, getting answers from lots of people to questions like NDE’s required extensive travel – with much less long-distance ground travel infrastructure, and usually without a car if you weren’t relatively wealthy. Then, you had to identify who had had an NDE and would also talk to you about it, establish a rapport with them, and find a quiet place to discuss.
Nowadays, we’re really lucky to have online forums like Quora, Reddit, and more where people can post question threads, and get quick, (mostly) free answers from people all over the place. People willing to answer are drawn to the threads, and will talk. The relative anonymity of these spaces encourages people to talk freely to strangers about things they might not even talk to their closest friends and families about.
You can easily search the forums for questions about NDE’s, and more. Such questions tend to be popular, and draw lots of answers – many people are fascinated with such subjects. So you will have a lot to pore through.
However, seeing lots of answers from so many different people does make one wonder.
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Thank you, dear readers, for reading, following, and sharing. Here’s to those who have generously shared their very personal, and profound near death experiences. If you enjoyed this content and want to see more of it, please hit “like” and subscribe, if you have not done so already. xoxo
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