by Mary C Neal
While NDEs are uniquely individual, and may only contain a few of the same components, the overall combination of components is consistent worldwide. Even young children, whose experiences are unlikely to be the result of preexisting beliefs or expectations, report descriptions identical to those of adults.
Individuals who have an NDE always know that something profound has occurred, but often don’t know what to think about it or how to process it. I have personally listened to the near-death stories of hundreds of people, and I have frequently been one of the first people to be told about it. Many people keep such an experience to themselves for many years. Why? Some worry that the significance and sense of sacredness of their experience will be diminished by sharing it, some fear the experience itself, but mostly people fear the disbelief of other people. They don’t want to be thought of as crazy, deceived, or “one of those religious zealots.”
If a witness as theologically profound as the apostle Paul found himself at a loss for words to describe his NDE, we shouldn’t be surprised that others also falter. Universally, in fact, people describe their NDEs as being beyond description and declare that even art and metaphor cannot begin to capture the true experience. As such, individual descriptions can seem incomplete or frustratingly vague. But don’t let that keep you from seeing the overarching truth: There is a convincing consistency within the accounts that researchers find fascinating, and that I hope you find persuasive.
COMMON ELEMENTS OF NDES
What are these commonalities? Some of the most frequent ones mentioned include the following.
1. A Deep Sense of Well-Being Infused with Pure Love
Without a doubt the foremost component of NDEs is the universal experience of feeling wholly and unabashedly loved and accepted by the pure Source of all love, which most people identify in some way as God. I have spoken with a few people who had an NDE in which they initially experienced what they described as hell, complete with fear, anxiety, and despair. Yet each one claimed to have, ultimately, been pulled away from that reality by God’s love.
This feeling of being immersed in God as total, unadulterated love is actually the most profound, memorable, and defining aspect of my entire NDE. If I ever had any doubts about the vitality of our spirits as separate entities from our flesh, the depth of love that I experienced once I was free from the confines of my body has left me utterly convinced. Trust me, words are inadequate to even begin to describe the immense reality of what I experienced, but I will do my best.
One of the first things I noticed about the purity of the love I encountered was that it displaced every other imaginable emotion. Like fear. Given the circumstances in which I found myself, fear would certainly be an appropriate response. And yet I discovered that I couldn’t have mustered up a feeling of fear or anxiety even if I had tried.
I’m not sure why this was so surprising to me. After all, the apostle John seemed to understand the link between being filled by God’s love and the utter displacement of fear. He wrote, “God is love….There is no fear in love” (1 John 4:16, 18). I admit that reading those words in the Bible and experiencing firsthand the impact of God’s love for me are two very different things.
2. Separation of Body and Spirit
Near-death experiences usually begin with a feeling of effortlessly moving through space, be it infinite darkness, infinite brilliance, through a tunnel, or along a path. This space often connects the past to the present to the future, without any real sense of time. A dimensional shift is often described and is certainly what I experienced.
People feel separated from their physical body but are often able to see their body and are aware of events going on around it. Furthermore, they are often able to accurately describe details of what was said and done while they were “dead” or relay information they could not have known beforehand. I was able to clearly see the people and their activities below me on the riverbank. I was also able to hear and understand what they were saying. Their words caused me to momentarily return to them and take a breath.
Sometimes this ability to both see and hear the events going on around them despite being unconscious or dead helps those who have had an NDE corroborate their experience to others.
Kimberly Sharp was a social worker in Harborview Medical Center when a patient named Maria was brought in after suffering a heart attack. Kim told me, and also wrote in her book After the Light: What I Discovered on the Other Side of Life That Can Change Your World, that Maria had been unconscious when she had been brought to the hospital. When Kimberly visited her hospital room the following day, Maria described leaving her body and floating above the hospital. Desperate to prove that she had, in fact, left her body and was not crazy, Maria told Kimberly about seeing a worn dark blue tennis shoe on the ledge outside a window on the far side of the hospital. Not believing her but wanting to help, Kimberly checked the ledge by pressing her face against the sealed windows—and found a shoe that perfectly matched the details Maria had related.6
My friend Robin shared with me her mother’s story that occurred during knee surgery. She said that her mother suddenly found herself floating above her body. She watched as the surgeons reacted to her flatlined EKG. The surgeon, who was a longtime friend of hers, cursed when he dropped an instrument. She was eventually sent back to her body. The following day, she described the scene and everything that happened in the operating room with great accuracy and finished by saying that she had never heard her surgeon curse before—the details of which were validated by her surgeon.7
3. No Fear of Death
Since fear is pushed aside by God’s love, it is not surprising that most people are not frightened by the separation of their body and soul, or by the experience and very recognition of their death—even if the death was sudden or traumatic.
I certainly experienced this feature. Even though I am a strong swimmer and love being in and around the water, I had always feared a drowning death. While underwater, I thought about this irony and noted that I never experienced the air hunger or panic that I had thought would be so terrifying.
Unlike the many people whose fear of death can be so paralyzing as to prevent them from fully engaging in life, few near-death experiencers harbor any lingering fear of death. Why would we? Death has no sting, so most of us have a change of perspective regarding our own death and that of others. Having experienced the reality of life after death, we view physical death as merely a transition and return to our true home.
Stephanie wrote to me that March 18, 2006, she was being monitored in the emergency room for heart issues and had been given a nitroglycerin pill when her blood pressure suddenly plummeted. She recalls:
Then I was gone—walking along a beautiful flagstone path in a huge tree-lined field of the most brilliantly colored flowers. I felt an incredibly radiant warmth like nothing I’ve ever felt on Earth. Breathing was totally effortless. As I walked on that path, I had such a feeling of love, joy, and peace, which is difficult to put into words. There was absolutely no sense of time during my heavenly experience.
Suddenly, I was back in the ER with about a dozen people crowded around me, including my very ashen husband and sobbing thirty-year-old daughter. I was incredibly disappointed to be back. My daughter kept saying, “We thought we lost you.” And all I said was, “I didn’t want to come back. I don’t want to be here.”
I was not an overly religious person, although I am now very aware of God’s presence, and I love knowing that God uses me to shine His light to others. Knowing that I may be the only “Christ” that some people will ever see makes me really try to see myself and others the way God sees us. I have no fear of dying and do not mourn the passing of others as I once did. Of course, the hard part is missing them, but I know we will be reunited one day.
—STEPHANIE, LOS ALTOS, CA
4. A Life Review
Most people experience some variation of a life review during their NDE. Many describe it as a fact-finding experience rath
er than a fault-finding one. As details of one’s life are viewed and experienced from the perspective of each living thing involved, the dying person usually gains new insight and develops greater empathy and compassion. It is often one of the NDE components that creates the most profound and lasting change in the experiencer.
In her book Searching for Home, Laurelynn Martin wrote:
By reviewing my past, I was brought to new places of discovery within myself. Many events were shown simultaneously. I recalled two examples. When I was five years old I teased another five-year-old girl to the point of tears. I was now in a unique position to feel what she felt. Her frustration, her tears, and her feelings of separateness were now my feelings. I felt a tremendous amount of compassion for this child. I experienced how she needed love, nurturing, and forgiveness. My essence gave love to both of us—a love so deep and tender, like the love between a mother and child. I realized by hurting another, I was only hurting myself. Again, I was experiencing oneness.
The next incident was similar:
I had made fun of a scrawny, malnourished asthmatic kid. He died when he was seventeen years old from a cerebral aneurysm. He seemed to be in the realm of existence I was in. Yet, still I was not sure where I was. When this boy was twelve, he had written me a love letter that I rejected. I was experiencing his pain, which became my pain. At the same time, I felt a tremendous amount of love for this boy and myself. My contact with him went beyond the physical and I felt his soul. He had a vibrant, bright light burning inside of him. Feeling his spirit’s strength and vitality was an inconceivable moment especially knowing how much he physically suffered when he was alive.8
5. “More Real Than Real”
People in the midst of an NDE have a heightened sense and depth of emotion, consciousness, and perceptions. Communication is always crystal clear, even when it occurs telepathically. Personally, the word telepathic has always sounded outlandish to me, and I hesitate to use it. But a better word to explain what happens eludes me. Even though heavenly communication does not use one’s mouth, as we do on Earth, it is perfectly understood. It is almost like a blast of pure energy, blanketed in love, which is being passed from one being to another.
When describing their NDEs, people always say the same thing I do—that the sights, sounds, sensations, and emotions are hyperintense and “more real than real.” Almost everyone notes indescribable beauty. My own experience included more colors than are in a rainbow, with an intensity of color that was beyond anything I have ever experienced here on Earth. I saw them, felt them, and experienced them. Remarkably, deaf people hear and blind people see—even those who have been deaf or blind since birth. Being able to see the beauty during an NDE is all the more thought-provoking when you realize that congenitally blind people don’t have visual components to their nighttime dreams or have visual hallucinations when given drugs.9
In their book, Ring and Cooper relate a story from a person who was born blind and had seen “no light, no shadows, nothing for forty-three years.” An automobile accident and an NDE in the emergency room changed all that:
“Rising through space,” he reported, “I saw lights. In the distance, I heard the most beautiful sounds, like wind chimes. They contained every single note you could imagine, from the lowest to the highest, all blended together.” After a passage through a dark tunnel, he came to “a balmy, bright summer land scene of trees, where there were thousands of people singing, laughing, and talking. Flowers were everywhere in different colors and variety. Both the flowers and birds I observed in the trees seemed to have light around them. Then I saw four of my previously deceased friends. They seemed to be healed, or somehow made better.”
After a loving encounter with Christ, he was told it wasn’t his time yet, and he “reentered my blind world in the hospital.”10
And there are more aspects to an NDE that many people experience.
6. Unusual Knowledge or Foresight
Like I did, at some point during their NDEs, most people experience a complete understanding of the universe and its divine order. As a result, some people return with new insights or abilities. During her NDE, Anita Moorjani visualized the cause of her cancer, which facilitated her miraculous healing after returning to Earth.11 Tony Cicoria returned with an ability to play the piano, and Mr. Olaf Swenson says it was the advanced knowledge of quantum physics gained during his NDE that allowed him to develop more than a hundred patentable ideas in subatomic chemistry.12 Even without retaining an understanding of complex subjects, almost everyone returns with a deep appreciation of the interconnectedness of everything and every living creature.
Occasionally near-death experiencers gain knowledge or insight into something that will happen in the future. I was told about my son’s future death, as well as some other challenges that my family and I would have to face. Sometimes people are shown their future children, while others are shown other situations that influence their desire to return to Earth.
A few years ago, I spoke with a man who had been shown a troubling and dangerous future situation in which his adult children would become embroiled. He also saw how that situation could be avoided if he were present, so he reluctantly chose to return to Earth. Five years later, what he had been shown did indeed come to pass and he was able to provide the needed assistance.
7. Reunion with Friends and Relatives
While I didn’t take the time to consider whether the people I encountered were known to me, none of my close relatives or friends had died before the time of my NDE. Despite that, I had a very clear sense that the people who greeted me had known and loved me for all my existence. Many other people, however, report being reunited with previously deceased relatives, friends, or guides who are brilliantly radiant and welcoming. These may be someone the experiencer knew to be dead, someone they didn’t yet know to be dead, or relatives who were not previously known to the experiencer. Regardless of the previously deceased person’s life circumstances or the circumstances of their death, their heavenly spirit appears as whole, healthy, joyful, and vibrant.
Occasionally, the NDE person meets someone who exposes a family secret, as it did for four-year-old Colton Burpo who met a miscarried older sibling he had never known about.13
When Dr. Eben Alexander had a coma-induced NDE, he desperately wanted to be greeted by his deceased father and was heartbroken when this did not occur. Instead, a sister he never knew existed, but subsequently identified, was there to guide him. Dr. Alexander has subsequently expressed gratitude for his father’s absence during the NDE, as his father’s presence might have caused Dr. Alexander to assume his NDE merely reflected his innermost desire, rather than being outside the realm of earthly reality.14
8. A Point of No Return
I’ve told you about the large, domed structure I approached. For me, that was the “point of no return,” and I subsequently learned that an awareness of this kind of threshold is quite common. Many people approach some sort of barrier beyond which there is no return from death. At, or before reaching this barrier, the dying person is told it is not their time, or they are not ready. They then return to their body, despite rarely wanting to do so.
Steven, from New Jersey, told me this story that vividly describes his encounter with the kind of barrier I’m talking about:
When I was young, I suffered from nephritis. At age sixteen, my kidneys finally shut down, and I was rushed to the hospital after being sick at home for a few days. I was admitted to the ICU, and I felt so cold. I first heard music that was not of this earth. I was then above the hospital bed and saw my mother praying at my bedside.
I then had a thin veil-like material over my body, but I did not have a real body. I was amazed because I could put my hands through it. Next, I was in a beautiful garden, walking down a path. When I got at the end of the path, I saw a wall that I could not climb over. When I looked over, I saw a city of gold. In the middle of it was a very bright dome. Then I heard a voice call my name three times
. I turned around and saw feet, a white robe, and a gold sash. He told me, “Steven, go back and live a long, happy life. But never, never forget me.” In a blink, I was back. I opened my eyes and told my mother I loved her.
—STEVEN, PATTERSON, NJ
The commonalities continue even after the experience itself has ended.
9. A Certainty About Significance
Most of us who have had this sort of profound spiritual experience hold an unwavering belief that we have experienced something of immeasurable significance. Most of us feel we have learned something about the purpose of life. A majority of experiencers sense that they have entered a spiritual realm, sometimes seeing a city of lights and almost always experiencing a divine presence, an all-loving Supreme Being.
10. Perfect Playback
One feature that distinguishes NDEs and other profound spiritual encounters is that no matter how much time has passed, individuals remember the experience reliably and accurately, with unchanging details. And rather than merely recalling a memory, it is as though we are simultaneously describing what happened while reexperiencing it in the present tense.
When I was in the hospital after my kayaking accident, I described my experiences to Debbi, the wife and mother of the friends who resuscitated me. This was the era before easy electronic communication, so she wrote everything down on paper in order to tell those who were still in Chile what had happened to me after I left the country. She pulled out her long-forgotten notes before quietly listening to me one recent summer when I was being interviewed in the home of her mother-in-law. Afterward, she was wide-eyed as she excitedly exclaimed that the details of my descriptions were exactly the same as they had been when I originally described them to her almost fourteen years earlier. She was surprised with this discovery, although I wasn’t.
