by Jeffrey Long
The next thing I knew I was a hundred feet above the river, looking down at the raft stuck against the rocks below. I saw the two men in the raft looking for me to come out from underneath. I saw the other woman, who had been in our raft, downstream, clinging to a rock. I watched my husband and my teenage sister, who had rafted without incident down the rapids ahead of us, come running back up the hill to find out why all the debris was floating down the river. We had taken everything out of their raft and put it into ours in case they flipped over, but they went down so easily, we just jumped in to follow them down. From above, I watched my husband climb onto a rock in the river. He couldn’t hear what the two men still in the raft were shouting to him over the roar of the water. He had no idea where I was or what had happened, but he knew I was missing. He looked as if he wanted to jump in to try to find me, and I suddenly found myself at his side, trying to stop him because he wasn’t much of a swimmer and I knew there was no point. When I reached out to stop him, my hand went right through him. I looked at my hand and thought, oh, my god, I’m dead!
…The Being of Light told me it was my choice to stay or go but that there was more for me to do in that life and it wasn’t quite time for me to leave. Still hesitating, I was told that if I chose to go back, I would be given certain knowledge to take back with me to share with others. After much discussion, I agreed to go back and suddenly found myself in front of a tall, cone-shaped building—so tall it seemed to go on forever. I was told this was the Hall of Knowledge. I entered the building and flew, spiraling upward, through what appeared to be shelves of books, like in a library, many millions of books, and I flew through them all. When I reached the top, I burst through it into a kaleidoscope of colors and, at the same time, my head popped out of the water. I was downriver about ten yards from the raft.
I immediately became aware of where I was and grabbed for the nearest rock. I was able to pull myself up, and I coughed up a lot of water. I was in a state of shock but needed no medical attention. I don’t know how long I was under the raft; no one was looking at their watch at the time. It could have been three or four minutes; it could have been ten. There was no time where I had been.
FUTURE STUDY
At this time there is a major ongoing study directed by Sam Parnia, MD, principal investigator of the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study.7 AWARE involves the collaboration of many major medical centers around the world, and researchers hope to examine some fifteen hundred survivors of cardiac arrest. As the project name implies, researchers will examine the awareness of patients at the time they are experiencing a cardiac arrest. Pictures will be placed in hospital rooms in such a way that they are visible only from the ceiling to determine if they can be seen during the OBE. It will be several years before we have results from this study. Hopefully, this study will answer many further questions about OBEs during NDEs.
There have been several prior studies where targets were placed in areas of hospitals where critically ill patients might have NDEs. These targets were paper or computer screens with visual pictures or words. Targets were usually placed in a location where the patient, and those caring for the patient, would not ordinarily see them. Designers of these studies hoped that patients having an out-of-body experience during an NDE would be able to see the targets and thus provide objective proof of the OBE. So far there have been few NDEs and even fewer OBEs in these studies. None of the OBEs in these studies ever included visual perception directed toward the target.
Personally, I think it is extremely important to continue with this type of research. Not only does it contribute to an understanding of our physical and mental processes, it may also contribute to our understanding of the spiritual world. I am convinced that studying out-of-body experiences in a variety of ways will lead to a clearer understanding of the special state of consciousness consistently described in NDEs.
WHAT THE SKEPTICS SAY
Some skeptics think that out-of-body experiences are simply fragments of memory that pop up as a person begins to die. They suggest that these fragments of memory might arise from what the near-death experiencer was able to hear or feel during the time of apparent unconsciousness. This argument also suggests that out-of-body experiences may be unreal reconstructions of partial memories from the time the NDEr is losing consciousness before the NDE or recovering consciousness immediately after the NDE. That some corroboration of the OBE observations with actual events or objects is found, they say, could be just lucky guesses.
The NDERF study shows that this argument is wrong. A review of 287 OBE accounts reveals that they are fully realistic, without any apparent error, in 97.6 percent of the cases. If OBEs were unreal fragments of memory or lucky guesses, it is unbelievable that there would be such a high percentage of completely accurate OBE observations in hundreds of NDEs.
Research says that memories formed just before or after a period of cardiac arrest, if they occur at all, are marked by confusion.8 By contrast, NDEs contain confused memories only rarely. If any part of the NDE were due to simple reconstruction of memory fragments, such memories would be expected to become progressively more or less confused as the NDEr approached or recovered from unconsciousness. This is not what happens. Near-death experiences are typically highly lucid from beginning to end.
In the NDERF study we ask, “At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?” People are invited to respond with a narrative answer. In reviewing hundreds of responses to this question, we have found that the highest level of consciousness and alertness is usually experienced not at the beginning or end of the NDE but somewhere during or throughout the entire NDE. Very few NDErs describe their highest level of alertness as occurring when they approached or recovered from their time of unconsciousness. This is further strong evidence that the OBEs that take place during near-death experiences are real events, not just memory fragments. In addition, NDERF research shows people in an out-of-body state usually experience a higher level of consciousness and alertness than they experience on a day-to-day basis during their everyday life.
FAR FROM THEIR BODY
There is additional striking evidence that OBEs occurring during near-death experiences are real. This evidence comes from the case studies of those NDErs who say they have left their body and traveled some distance from it, beyond the range of their physical senses. For instance, a patient whose body is being resuscitated in the emergency room might find himself or herself floating out of the room and into another part of the hospital. Later, the person is able to recount accurate observations about what was taking place far from the physical body. Many case reports describing this have been published over the years by NDE researchers.9 In the previously presented NDERF study of OBE, there were ten OBE observations of earthly events that were clearly far from the physical body and beyond any possible bodily sensory awareness. All ten of these OBE observations were entirely realistic.
Out-of-body experiences containing observations far removed from the body are as realistic as the more common OBEs involving observations of events happening close to the physical body. This example comes from a doctor in India. He made an electrical calling device, but it malfunctioned and he was electrocuted. He was able to see through the walls of his house and saw his father approaching his body. He was able to see details on the roof tiles far above his body:
I rose to about ten feet off the ground, and I stopped, hovering near the roof tiles. I could see the letters written on the roof tiles from very near, almost a few inches. Each letter appeared very big to me.
As a physician, I am startled by such experiences. Even now, after encountering hundreds of out-of-body accounts, I am still sometimes amazed to think that our consciousness may know no bounds.
TRY THIS AT HOME
Still, there may be some who are not yet convinced that OBEs are an authentic phenomenon. Are you still a doubter? Try this experiment: Close your eyes for five minutes in a public
place, staying as aware as possible of ongoing events during this time. Have another person there with you who is seeing and hearing events. At the end of five minutes, compare your impressions of the five minutes with the person accompanying you. Even though you were fully alert and trying to be aware of ongoing events, I can guess that your impressions will contain significant inaccuracies—far more than those found in the out-of-body experiences of the subjects in the NDERF study.
5
PROOF #3: BLIND SIGHT
Seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.
—Dennis Waitley
In 1998 Kenneth Ring, PhD, and Sharon Cooper, MA, published a landmark article in the Journal of Near-Death Studies about blind people who have vividly visual near-death experiences or out-of-body experiences not associated with NDEs.1 An especially interesting subgroup in this study was made up of case reports from individuals who were born totally blind and had NDEs with the typical elements, including detailed visual content. It is medically inexplicable that a person blind either at birth or shortly after birth would have an organized visual NDE.
One such example is the story of Vicki, who saw for the first time in her life during her near-death experience, as documented in Ring and Cooper’s book, Mindsight. She was blind from shortly after birth because of damage to her optic nerves as a result of receiving too much oxygen in an incubator. Vicki had two near-death experiences. One was at age twelve due to complications of appendicitis, and the second was at age twenty-two following a serious car accident. The first time in her life that she was able to see was during her first near-death experience when she had an OBE. According to Vicki, the content of both near-death experiences was similar, but the NDE following the car accident was more vivid and detailed. Thus, I will present details of her second near-death experience, which occurred after she sustained trauma, including head injuries, so severe that she was still recovering from the accident a year later. As her near-death experience began, she was in “stunned awe” above her body in the emergency room, watching the medical personnel trying to save her. After she calmed down, she had a very detailed and highly visual NDE that included visiting a beautiful unearthly realm, encountering deceased friends, and a life review. She reported her reaction to seeing herself:
I knew it was me…. I was pretty thin then. I was quite tall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it was a body, but I didn’t even know that it was mine initially. Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling, and I thought, “Well, that’s kind of weird. What am I doing up here?” I thought, “Well, this must be me. Am I dead?”…I just briefly saw this body, and…I knew that it was mine because I wasn’t in mine.2
Vicki was married and wearing rings, but of course had never seen them. Here are her recollections of her rings:
I think I was wearing the plain gold band on my right ring finger and my father’s wedding ring next to it. But my wedding ring I definitely saw…. That was the one I noticed the most because it’s unusual. It has orange blossoms on the corners of it.3
What is so remarkable about Vicki’s recollection of these visual impressions is that she had never before understood the concept of vision. “This was,” she said, “the only time I could ever relate to seeing and to what light was, because I experienced it.”4
MIRACLE VISION
I have interviewed Vicki myself, and I find her story to be remarkable. For those born blind, sight is an abstract concept. They understand the world only from their senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Occasionally, blind people with certain correctable conditions are able to regain their vision through surgical procedures. When blind people acquire sight, there is often a prolonged period of time in which they have trouble making sense of visual perceptions. This contrasts with Vicki, who was immediately aware of her visual perceptions during her NDE. This further suggests that Vicki’s vision was not of physical origin.
Studies have shown that the dreams of those born blind do not include vision. Vision cannot be effectively explained to those born blind, even by drawing analogies to the four remaining senses they possess. I tried this in conversations with Vicki and was unsuccessful.
Being blind from birth and suddenly being able to see at the point of death must be both beautiful and frustrating at the same time. A number of the subjects in Ring and Cooper’s study tried to explain exactly what they had experienced. Some backed away from saying the experience was visual because they truly didn’t know what a visual experience was. After thinking about it, one man declared that his experience was a form of synthesis, which in this case meant a combination of all of his senses to form a new experience. Here is how the subject described it in Ring and Cooper’s book, Mindsight:
I think what it was that was happening here was a bunch of synesthesia, where all these perceptions were being blended into some image in my mind, you know, the visual, the tactile, all the input that I had. I can’t literally say I really saw anything, but yet I was aware of what was going on, and perceiving all that in my mind…. But I don’t remember detail. That’s why I say I’m loath to describe it as a visual.5
Another of Ring’s subjects went on to say that his visual NDE went beyond the visual:
What I’m saying is I was more aware. I don’t know if it’s through sight that I was aware…. I’m not sure. All I know is…somehow I was aware of information or things that were going on that I wouldn’t normally be able to pick up through seeing…. That’s why I’m being very careful how I’m wording it, ’cause I’m not sure where it came from. I would say to you I have a feeling it didn’t come from seeing, and yet I’m not sure.6
After considering the stories told to him by these blind subjects, Ring and Cooper came to a conclusion that seemed to take all sides of the argument into consideration:
Even if we cannot assert that the blind see in these experiences in any straightforward way, we still have to reckon with the fact—and it does seem to be a fact—that they nevertheless do have access to a kind of expanded super-sensory awareness that may in itself not be explicable by normal means…. Perhaps, as we have suggested, even if these reports may not in the end represent an analogue of retinal vision as such, they clearly represent something that must be directly addressed….
Indeed, what we appear to have here is a distinctive state of consciousness, which we would like to call transcendental awareness, or mindsight.7
I agree with Ring and Cooper. Visual NDEs that happen to the blind appear to involve an unearthly form of visual experience. There is no medical explanation for anyone born blind to have such a visual NDE. Yet blind people who have near-death experiences may immediately have full and clear vision. This is further evidence that vision in NDEs, including near-death experiences in those who are not blind, is unlike ordinary, physical vision.
NDERF has received several near-death accounts from individuals with significant visual impairment or even legal blindness. An example of a near-death experience occurring in an individual with legal blindness comes from Violet. She was having severe bleeding during childbirth, and the doctor thought they had lost her. Violet had an out-of-body experience, and her vision was remarkably clear:
Everything was very bright and sharp. I am legally blind without my glasses, but the nurse took my glasses before they took me to the delivery room, but I could see clearly what the doctor was doing.
BETTER VISION NEAR DEATH
By studying such a huge volume of near-death experiences, we have received a constant stream of answers to questions we have about NDEs and the afterlife. But studying NDEs may be mystifying as well. For every answer we receive, sometimes several other questions present themselves. And one of the big questions for me is: Why—how—can a blind person see during a near-death experience? Add to that another question: What does it mean that a blind person can see during an NDE?
Let me start by considering that first question. Describing vision in the blind as “unearthly” is n
ot a complete answer. There is a transcendental aspect to much in NDE research that remains mysterious. Researching NDEs requires different methodology than is used for most other scientific research. Near-death experiences cannot be reproduced in a laboratory. We cannot wire people with sensitive medical equipment and give them near-death experiences. That would be medically unethical. One thing that we can do is collect and study large numbers of NDE case studies and look for evidence regarding the possibility of an afterlife. That is what we have done with the NDERF study.
But by doing this, we have encountered many questions for which we don’t yet have complete answers. Why the blind can see during an NDE is one of them. Although we don’t have a complete answer, we do have enough data that I can offer some speculation.
It is medically inexplicable for someone born blind to have a detailed and organized visual experience. Another piece of evidence comes from nonblind near-death experiencers who frequently describe unearthly visual ability—360-degree vision, for example. People who have near-death experiences are generally unconscious, and their normal physiologic ability to see is not functioning during their NDEs. All this points to the conclusion that vision described during NDEs is different from earthly vision, which is so familiar to us. Vision in the afterlife may be somewhat analogous to earthly vision but very different in that it is more vivid, comprehensive, and nonphysical.
All five senses associated with earthly life (seeing, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) have been reported in the NDERF case studies. It is without question that NDErs often describe increased function in all of these senses at a time when they should have no sensory function at all. Of all these senses, vision is often described as being very different from ordinary, everyday vision.
