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Dead Reckoning: Scientists Weigh the
Scientific and Spiritual Facets of NDEs
By Mark Sauer
When Deb Foster died in a La Jolla hospital, she found
herself on a stairway surrounded by cats and dogs and mesmerized by a
celestial blue sky, the likes of which she had never seen on earth.
Mary Clare Schlesinger hovered above her bed in the
intensive-care unit, watching her husband and daughter react in shock and
fathomless grief at the thought of her passing.
Beverly Brodsky said she went on a spectacular journey
through a tunnel of intense light, a magic ride with angels and a shapeless
God to a place of perfect knowledge, wisdom, truth and justice.
All three said the journeys on which they embarked while
"clinically dead," a period of a few moments when their hearts
stopped, transformed their lives and left them with no fear of death.
They are not alone.
Many patients -- a notable study says nearly one in five
-- who are revived following cardiac arrest report memories of their brief
time at death's door. They undergo a lucid, often indelible experience,
even though they were unconscious with flat brain scans during the moments
in which their hearts were still.
The near-death experiences, or NDEs, described by the
three San Diego patients contain many of these typically reported elements:
An out-of-body experience; acute awareness; moving
through a void or tunnel toward bright light; meeting deceased relatives; a
life review; feelings of intense joy, profound peace -- a feeling so
blissful they longed to remain; and seeing a point of no return.
Increased survival rates from faster responses to
cardiac-arrest calls, extensive CPR training, development of portable
defibrillators and other improved methods of resuscitation mean more and
more people could be expected to have near-death experiences.
Though it may sound like the stuff of supermarket
tabloids or the latest New Age religion, NDEs are attracting the attention
of distinguished practitioners who study both the body and mind.
"Some may say this is the brain's survival
mechanism, that there is a physical explanation," said Dr. Vivian
Ellis, an obstetrician at Scripps Memorial Hospital who resuscitated Deb
Foster after assisting with her Caesarean section.
"But I think there is definitely a spiritual aspect
to this," said Ellis. She has practiced obstetrics at Scripps for 15
years and said she has had several patients who reported NDEs to her.
"Whatever happens, it is more than science. This
raises fascinating questions about human consciousness, and about light and
time."
Yet many physicians remain skeptical about near-death
reports.
Dr. Robert Sarnoff, a pulmonologist who revived Mary
Clare Schlesinger at La Jolla's Green Hospital in February 2001, said that
in 25 years of taking care of gravely ill patients, she was the only one
who has reported an NDE.
"It is not a big topic on my radar screen,"
Sarnoff said.
Other San Diego cardiologists and trauma specialists
declined to even discuss the subject.
Dr. Pim van Lommel said he often encounters this
response from colleagues.
He is a cardiologist in the Netherlands who led a
13-year study of the NDE phenomena. The results were published in 2001 in
the respected British medical journal Lancet.
"NDE is not a rare phenomenon," said van
Lommel in an e-mail interview. Yet NDEs are, to many physicians, "an
inexplicable phenomenon and hence an ignored result of survival in a
critical medical situation."
"Physicians must be open and must take the time to
listen to patients without prejudice."
A most serene place
After her baby was delivered by Caesarean section on
Dec. 11, 2002, Deb Foster was wheeled into a recovery room. As attendants
moved her from gurney to bed, something awful happened.
She suffered an amniotic-fluid embolism, a rare
obstetric emergency in which amniotic fluid entered her bloodstream, passed
into her lungs and caused cardiac arrest.
For more than three minutes, the then-42-year-old, who
already had a toddler at home, was clinically dead. Though unconscious,
Foster says she had the most clear and profound experience of her life:
"I left that room and went to a staircase that was
going up into the sky. It was so high, up past the clouds. I am afraid of
heights, but I had no fear, even though there were no railings," she
said.
"I could look off to the distance and see beautiful
rolling hills. The sky was the most unimaginable color of blue that doesn't
exist in this life."
Foster started crying as she described this beauty.
"There is simply peace. No chaos. No pain; the most
serene place you can imagine, a perfect moment in time."
Foster said she believed in God but questioned her faith
and was uncertain about an afterlife before this experience.
"Now there is no question in my mind; there is a
God, there is a heaven."
Scientific
analysis
Van Lommel noted that the effects of NDEs "on
patients seem similar worldwide, across all cultures."
He said he became interested after reading the book
"Return From Tomorrow" by George Ritchie, an Army private who in
1943 was revived after "dying" from a bout of pneumonia.
"I started to ask patients who had survived a
cardiac arrest if they could remember something" from when they were
unconscious, van Lommel said.
That led to a study of cardiac patients who had lapsed
into unconsciousness because of anoxia (deficiency of oxygen) at 10 Dutch
hospitals between 1988 and 1992.
The patients ranged in age from 26 to 92; 75 percent
were men. Most were interviewed within five days of being clinically dead.
Of 344 patients, 62 -- or 18 percent -- remembered
something of the time they were dead, van Lommel said.
Two-thirds of those (41 patients) had a
"core," or extremely vivid, NDE while the other 21 were
determined to have had a superficial NDE, he said.
Dr. Ellis of Scripps said the fact that most
resuscitated patients do not report NDEs may be likened to the fact that
some people vividly remember dreams while others have no memory of them at
all.
Surviving patients in van Lommel's study who reported
NDEs were interviewed again at two- and eight-year intervals, and compared
with a control group of patients who did not have the experience.
Researchers were struck, van Lommel said, by how the NDE
patients had been transformed.
Nearly all had no fear of death, believed in an
afterlife, and strongly believed that what was truly important in life was
"love and compassion for oneself, for others and for nature."
"What might distinguish the small percentage of
patients who report an NDE from those who do not?" van Lommel asked.
Neither the duration of the cardiac arrest, or unconsciousness, or
differing resuscitation techniques had any effect on the frequency of NDE.
"Neither could we find any relationship between the
frequency of NDE and any administered drugs, fear of death before the
arrest, fore-knowledge of NDE, religion nor education."
Researchers ranging from those with scientific degrees
to devotees of the paranormal to practitioners of New Age religions agree
that the phenomenon of near-death experiences raises more questions than
can currently be answered.
One is: If NDE is physiologically based, why doesn't
every patient who recovers from cardiac arrest/coma report them?
Another is, if patients whose hearts and brain activity
have stopped remember vivid experiences, what does that say about the
origin of the conscious mind?
One thing is certain, van Lommel said: "The NDE is
transformational, causing profound changes of life and insight and loss of
the fear of death."
A perfect light
In 1970, when Beverly Brodsky was 20 and living in
Venice, Calif., the motorcycle she was riding on was hit by a car driven by
a drunk.
Brodsky, who is married with a grown daughter and is
retired after 28 years as a federal employee, said she suffered severe head
injuries and lacerations to her face.
"They released me from the hospital with no pain
medication. I was in agony."
Though raised in a Jewish family, Brodsky said she was
an agnostic at the time. As she lay in bed, Brodsky said, she feared she
would pass out from the pain.
"I wanted to die. I remember praying: 'God, if you
are there, take me.' With that prayer, I was lifted up out of my body. I
had these terrible head injuries and pain, and I had been legally blind
before. But suddenly my eyesight was perfect.
"On the ceiling was an angel in flowing white robes
that glowed from within, like a lantern. I believe I was clinically dead at
that point.
"He took my hand, and we flew out the window. I had
no fear. We were over the ocean, and above us was this dark area. At the
end of it was a pinpoint of light, brighter than anything I had ever seen.
It was like a tunnel, and we went into the tunnel.
"It was a light that contained all things;
everything that ever was or will be was in this light.
"There were no words, no form, no face, no
structure. All communication happened telepathically. I thought, well this
isn't the guy on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but this must be God."
Brodsky has three shelves of books about NDE in her
Chula Vista home. She moderates a monthly meeting for those who have had
such experiences and is active in national NDE groups.
"I have never come to doubt my experience,"
she said. "I see it as a great gift from God. I'm honored I was
allowed to remember."
Glimpse of afterlife
Long relegated to the realm of the paranormal, NDE burst
on the scene 30 years ago when Raymond Moody, an East Coast psychiatrist,
published "Life After Life," examining reports of near-death
experiences -- a term Moody coined. It sold 10 million copies worldwide.
Other books and articles and studies followed, including
several by Kenneth Ring, now professor emeritus of psychology at the
University of Connecticut and co-founder of the International Association
for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).
Ring studied thousands of NDE reports, including some by
blind patients. He concluded that religious orientation was not a factor.
An atheist was as likely to have one as someone devoutly religious,
according to Ring, who retired from the NDE field in the late 1990s.
Regardless of their backgrounds, most patients were
convinced they were in the presence of some supreme being and loving power,
and had glimpsed a life yet to come.
Ring, who concluded NDEs do not have the rambling,
disconnected nature of hallucination, said patients who reported them came
away with strong feelings of self-acceptance, a great concern for others
and more appreciative of life -- more loving and more spiritual.
The power of love
Mary Clare Schlesinger is among the apparent minority
who do not see religious overtones in her near-death experience.
"I had an out-of-body experience. But I see it as
part of life, not a religious experience," said the 56-year-old
Escondido woman. She suffered respiratory failure four years ago from
complications due to post-polio syndrome and a severe virus.
Schlesinger said she was placed on life support in the
intensive-care unit and realized she was dying. "Time suddenly became
very important. I could slow it down or speed it up," she said.
"Time slowed down, enabling me to go through all of
my life and consciously forgive everyone who had ever hurt me. Then it was
easy to let go."
Schlesinger, who was raised Roman Catholic, said that
from her perch in the hospital room, she looked down and clearly saw
herself in bed and her husband and daughter at her bedside.
"I saw Dr. Sarnoff come into the room, and I knew I
had a chance; I knew he could bring me back. I saw Steve and Rebecca, saw
how shaken my daughter was, and I decided to come back.
"It was not as if I were weighing a choice, though.
As soon as I saw Rebecca and Steve's faces, all the energy and strength
available went into coming back.
"I had incredible peace and acceptance. ... It is a
different kind of energy, strength and power. Survival was more about love.
The love I have for life and the people I love and the love they have for
me is very powerful."
When she had recovered and returned home, Schlesinger
wrote a poem about her experience, which concludes: "... my heart and
soul into one/a union of love becomes ME."
Skeptics
weigh in
NDEs can be explained by neurochemistry and are the
result of brain states that occur due to a dying, demented or drugged
brain, notes Robert Todd Carroll in "The Skeptics Dictionary."
Carroll cites British researcher Susan Blackmore's
conclusion that the feelings of extreme peacefulness -- almost universal
among NDE reports -- are the result of endorphins released due to the
extreme stress of the situation.
"There are two basic hypotheses," said Paul
Kurtz in an interview. He is a retired philosophy professor, well-known
secular humanist and founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation
of Claims of the Paranormal, one of the nation's largest skeptics' groups.
"One, something leaves the body, the spirit or
soul, goes to another realm, returns and reports. Two, this is a
physiological process that alters consciousness, triggers bright lights,
tunnel vision, out-of-body experiences and the like.
"That latter makes much more sense to me."
Van Lommel concedes that "neurophysiological
processes must play some part in NDE."
Similar experiences can be induced through electrical
stimulation in patients with epilepsy, he noted, and are seen with
"cerebral hypoxia, as in rapid acceleration during training of fighter
pilots."
"Also, NDE-like experiences have been reported
after the use of drugs like ketamine, LSD or (psilocybin) mushrooms."
But the perception of light, sound flashes and recollections with drug use
are more fragmented and far less panoramic than that of an NDE, he said.
Most compelling to van Lommel and many other NDE
researchers is what the experience suggests about one of the great medical
mysteries -- the nature of human consciousness.
"Traditionally, it has been argued that thoughts or
consciousness are produced by large groups of neurons or neuronal
networks," van Lommel said. "How could a clear consciousness
outside one's body be experienced at the moment the brain no longer
functions during a period of clinical death?"
The suggestion made by van Lommel and other NDE
researchers is that the mind may not entirely be the product of matter. And
"at the time of physical death, consciousness will continue to be
experienced in another dimension."
Van Lommel said he likes to compare our brains with
computers: "The Internet is not produced by the computer, but received
by it. And in the same way, our brain functions as a receiver, not as a
producer, of consciousness."
There are still more questions than answers, he
acknowledged.
"We finally should consider the possibility that
death, like birth, may well be a mere passing from one state of
consciousness to another."
Mark Sauer is a Staff Writer for the San Diego
Union-Tribune.
This story appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday,
May 1, 2005, Lifestyle Section, page E-1, in Editions 1,2,3. Reprinted with
permission.
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