Several researchers have argued against the validity of the Near Death

Experience, insisting that it isn't a mystical, religious, or paranormal

occurrence at all, rather it is one that can be explained by the chemistry

of the brain, the adaptive response of the human organism, or the psycho-

logical make up of the individual which might make her/him more prone to

hallucinations. The medical reductionist model became the primary focus

of study for these researchers. James Alcock expressed the prevailing

opinion:

"I have no argument with people's theology or philosophy. What is

bothersome, however, is the necessity these people feel to try to provide

'objective' evidence to support their beliefs, and their attempts to fool the

layman with their claims of scientific rigor and exactitude. Survival research

is based on belief in search of data rather than observation in search of

explanation. It is an expression of individual and collective anxiety about death."

Russell Noyes, a psychiatrist in the 70's and a vocal critic, advanced

the depersonalization model, suggesting that the anxiety of death was so

overwhelming in humans, our unconscious tries to escape from the fact by

depersonalizing the experience. In other words, we separate our selves,

psychically, from the stimulation as a natural adaptive response to

stress.

One possible scenario is that our brain chemistry first pumps out

chemicals like adrenaline making us hyperalert which would allow greater

perception with increased hearing and visual acuity, and an altering of

our internal sense of time. It then floods brain receptor sites with

other chemicals similar to endorphins that gives us a natural high, a

feeling of euphoria, detachment and separation from the threatening

experience. We loose our sense of personal involvement in the threat; we

become dissociated from the possibility of death to the physical body.

In this way, nature helps us to cope more easily with the on-coming

threat and thus to possibly alter the outcome. This response is simply a

biological process of adaptation which aids the human being in survival

of the species.

Another medical explanation was that the brain of the NDEer was suffering

a lack of oxygen - hypoxic or anoxia. In this model the brain begins to shut

down along specified evolutionary paths. Dr. Susan Blackmore of the Brain

and Perception Laboratory in England studied the stages of the NDE and has

analyzed them according to the progressive dysfunction of the brain under

stress. The lobe that controls the sense of time would be one of the first to

dysfunction. Blackmore believes the tunnel experience may be the result of

the events occurring in the stressed visual cortex. She suggests that the

visual cortex is unable to organize itself because of increasing lack of sensory

information. This disrupts the normal sequence of nerve conduction resulting

in broad bands of irregular stripes of activity. The stripes are interpreted as

concentric rings, tunnels or spirals. The mind, in the absence of verifiable

information constructs a sequence of images resulting in the perception of a

tunnel. She explains the perception of light in much the same way. The visual

cortex may begin to fire randomly causing sensations of bright, diffused light,

with occasional multiple firings that would produce an image of an organized

light focus - or light being. Likewise the area that controls hearing may also

begin to suffer and react similarly. Thus the person in the life threatening

situation would experience going through a tunnel, a perception of bright light,

and hear unusual sounds.

She goes on to address the issue of the Out of Body Experience and the

witnessing of the attempts to revive the patient. Blackmore believes that the

mind is struggling to ascertain a sense of itself in reality. It gropes for images

that are still in short term memory such as a hospital room or operating table

and creates a vision of a possible reality. As hearing is one of the last

functions to go, one may even hear a conversation that is going on around

you and incorporate it into the image, much as we do in the dream state.

A third medical possibility of the NDE is that the individual was

predisposed to autoscopic hallucinations, an organic mental disorder

that is frequently seen in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. It

has also been proven that anoxia can cause hallucinations making the

experience appear real. Blackmore and others are quick to point out the

experiential quality of the NDE and OBE. The subjective experience of

being outside of one's physical body is very real to the individual and

therefore the perceived 'experience' is, actually, scientifically

indisputable.

Ring, Moody, Sabom and others have given sound rebuttals to these

skeptical researchers and point out that the NDE can occur in situations

where there is no deficit of oxygen. Most NDE chroniclers have been very

careful to screen out those people who have any prior history of mental

illness thus eliminating this contaminant to the validity of the NDE study.

Sabom cites some of his research with a control group of medically

experienced personnel who were asked to verbally duplicate esuscitation

procedures and found that NDEers, who claim to have witnessed their own

evival, were more accurate at describing the procedure than the control group.

WHEN HEAVEN BECOMES HELL

There is little discussion in NDE literature and research about the

negative reactions that may occur to an individual while in the state.

Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a cardiologist, is one of the few researchers to

study this particular phenomenon of the NDE and suggested that "the

reason for there being no such reports is that although patients may

recall such hellish experiences immediately afterwards, they tend to

forget them with time. In other words, their memories protect them from

recalling the unpleasant aspects".

Rawlings believes that the length

of time between experience and interview changes one's perception of the

near- fatal event from unpleasant to pleasant. Because the positive

aspects were more pleasant, they will be retained longer. He further

found that patients who had negative NDEs described "physical sensations

of burning, suffocating and semiblindness; they described the landscape

as desolate, windy, arid, superheated, empty, "full of eyes, gritty;

there may be unknown people in the background moaning and in obvious

suffering... The overwhelming feeling is one of despair."

More often negative NDEs occur in suicides, and specifically those who

take drug overdoses. It has been postulated by Scott Rogo that the

hellish experiences are hallucinations brought on by the extreme

life-saving procedures such as resuscitation and powerful procedures

that stimulate the body to be jolted back into life. Another theory of

his is that drugs, either in an overdose or medically prescribed, may

induce the nightmarish visions; and yet a third theory examines the role

of religious and cultural expectations of suicide as being seen by God

as unpardonable, thus the mind creates a self-imposed judgment and

sentence. Studies show that suicide attempts that result in an NDE are

not repeated.

Finally, Phyllis Atwater describes some negative physiological and

neurological effects that occur after the NDE: disorientation, ringing

in the ears, cell-salt imbalances, sensitivity to light, wrist watches

don't keep accurate time (presumably because the NDEer's increased

electromagnetic field interferes with the battery), increased allergies,

and increased sensitivity to alcohol and humidity.xv

RELATED RESEARCH AND THE NEXT FRONTIER

Interest in the NDE has spawned or coincided with several exciting areas,

some of which have been studied for years and are on-going, some of

which are recent explorations. Stanislav Grof, in his enlightening book,

The Holotropic Mind, has outlined four archetypal processes that the

fetus undergoes prior to and leading up to the birth event:

He believes these to be the determining factors of a person's life

choices and experiences. Grof reasons that each process is infused with

the most intense feelings that the fetus will ever experience in life

and therefore the child/adult will seek comparable expenses. Both the

Amniotic Universe and the Death and Rebirth processes have similar

elements to the NDE and may be actually vividly recalled as a person

nears death. Perhaps the NDE is a restimulation of the Death/Rebirth

birth process. Grof describes this last process thus: "The experience of

the ego death, marking the transition between BPM III and BPM IV is

usually dramatic and catastrophic. We might be bombarded with images

from the past and present . ... After we have hit bottom, we are

suddenly struck by visions of blinding white or golden light of

supernatural radiance and beauty. There is the feeling of space

expanding around us and we are filled to overflowing with a sense of

liberation, redemption, salvation, and forgiveness. ...We may feel

overwhelming love for our fellow humans, deep appreciation for the

warmth of human contact, solidarity with all life, and a sense of

oneness with nature and the universe."xvi This description can be taken

right out of the pages of popular NDE books.

It may be that the beginning and the end of our lives are integrally

connected, with the similar phenomena either being subjectivly initiated

and experienced, or divinely initiated by a universal intelligence and

subjectively experienced.

Another related area is that of Reincarnation and the survival of the

'soul' or creative intelligence after death. As Ring and many others

dare to speculate, "I do believe, but not just on the basis of my own or

others' data regarding near-death experiences, that we continue to have

a conscious existence after our physical death and that the core

experience does represent its beginning, a glimpse of things to

come."

Ian Stevenson's study of children who have reincarnated was seriously

addressed at the NDE forum of the Spirit in Action ITA Conference

raising the issue of levels of death. The children in Stevenson's study

reincarnated fairly quickly, had birthmarks that matched their previous

traumatic deaths, began to speak of their former life as soon as they

learned to talk, but stopped discussing it at about the age of 7 - 8.

The panel suggested that these children had not deeply died, that is,

they had not stayed for any length of time in the next 'dimension' or

plane of existence. The idea of levels of death, then, suggests that the

NDE can be categorized as the very first level or perhaps a 'meta-level 1'.

Raymond Moody has now moved on to investigate other areas of the

survival of consciousness. In Coming All The Way Back (1990), he

addressed the subject of past life regressions. The book opens with his

own hypnotically induced recall of seven previous lives. His latest book

and the topic of his presentation at the ITA Conference is Reunions -

Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones, (1993). His interest in

calling forth an apparition through the ancient Coming All The Way Back

(1990), he addressed the subject of past life regressions. The book

opens with his own hypnotically induced recall of seven previous lives.

His latest book and the topic of his presentation at the ITA Conference

is Reunions - Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones, (1993).

His interest in calling forth an apparition through the ancient technique of

mirror gazing is connected to his previous work with NDEs. In studying

methods to clinically replicate the NDE, the only possibility, short of

putting test subjects into a critical life-threatening situation then

pulling them back for questioning, was to try to replicate the 'meeting

the spirits'. He notes, "A form of apparition is common among people who

have NDEs. They tell us that as they enter into a realm of light, they

are met by the spirits of relatives and friends who have previously

died. These experiences are often transformative, frequently having

positive after effects."xix He believes that by bringing forth the

apparition of a dead loved one, grieving parents, children, etc. can be

helped through the grieving process by contacting the surviving

intelligence. Thus one positive effect of the NDE can now be replicated.

Ken Ring too, has been exploring new realms. He has expanded his theme

in Heading Toward Omega into The Omega Project. In this Project, Ring

has compared the similarities of the UFO experiencer, from close

encounter of the first kind (CE-I distance sighting of UFO) to the close

encounter of fourth kind (CE-IV being taken on board a ship - usually

unwillingly) with those of the NDEer. He has developed a comparison

chart

Finally, (but only for the purpose of this paper which seems to have no

end for there is an enormous amount of spin-off topics), there is the

whole area of "fear-death experiences". These are experiences that

duplicate the NDE core experiences exactly, but are not precipitated by

actual revival from clinical death. Every researcher has numerous

accounts of this kind leading to speculation that the NDE may not be

triggered by the actual encounter with death, rather the mind's belief

that the physical body is at risk of death.

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By Cathy Hainer, USA TODAY 08/11/97