In the modern West, most people are very uncomfortable with the idea of death. It is an intensely taboo subject, which many people do not like discuss. To me, it seems highly likely that a large part of the reason for our discomfort at death being discussed is that we can no longer recall what lies on the other side and we lack people in our society to tell us what we can expect. All that we really have are the vestiges of Christian belief, which few people have any real belief in or respect for any more, or a nihilistic belief in oblivion. Maybe if we gave more consideration to what occurs to us after death and considered that we may have to account for our actions in this life, we would live in a more peaceful and respectful society. As it is, we often seem to live life as though we think ourselves immortal, with little thoughts of the future repercussions of our actions. Maybe we are at some level still aware that this is not the way of the world and that is why the mention of death can still cause such panic and fear.
However, even in the strictly scientific domain of the west, the reality of a world beyond this one is gaining more and more credence. There have been several medical and psychological studies by western scientists on the subject in the past century. In the 1970s, Dr. Raymond Moody published his book Life After Life. Dr. Moody interviewed over 150 people who claimed to have had near death experiences and noted the following components which consistently recurred in NDEs, not necessarily all at once or in any particular order.
- Ineffability
- Hearing the news of one’s own death
- Feelings of peace and quiet
- The noise (a sort of buzzing)
- The dark tunnel
- Out of the body
- Meeting others
- The being of light
- The review
- The border
- Coming back
(Kenneth Ring, 1980, p23)
In 1980, Kenneth Ring conducted a study entitled Life at Death. He wanted to investigate the same area as Moody but wanted to be more rigorously scientific in his investigations. He refined Moody’s system of stages, cutting them down to just five. The order which Ring lists them in is meant to represent the frequency with which such experiences occur in people who undergo NDEs, with the most common experience at the beginning. Additionally, the sequence of stages seems to normally occur in order, i.e. if someone experiences the fifth stage, they will probably have already experienced stages one to four. However, there do seem to be exceptions to this.
The first stage identified by Ring, which 60% of his sample group experienced, is an incredibly intense sensation of peace and well-being. Many of the people that he interviewed said that it was difficult or even impossible to describe what this feeling was like. Nonetheless, several of them attempted to do so. One woman described an ‘incredible feeling of peace…. All of a sudden there was no pain, just peace… so completely unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced in my life…. A perfectly beautiful, beautiful feeling.’ (Kenneth Ring, p41). Another man, searching for the word to describe what he had gone through, said ‘Use euphoric. Use orgasmic. Or use high. It was very tangible, very real. But it was doing magnificent things to me.’ (Ring, p42). A third member of the sample group, a woman who had suffered a cardiac arrest, ‘clearly struggled to find the words to describe the ineffable’ but eventually reported that ‘the thing I could… absolutely never forget is that absolute feeling of peace, joy or something…. I just remember this absolute beautiful feeling. Of peace… and happy! Oh so happy!’ (Ring, p43). It is interesting to note that, despite our cultural terror of death, the majority of the people interviewed by Ring reported that they had had an amazingly positive experience, more intensely beautiful than anything that happened to them in normal life.
Ring identifies a sensation of separation from the physical body as the second stage of what he deems the core thanatomimetic experience. 37% of his sample group got as far as this stage and variously describe it as ‘a real floating sensation,’ a feeling ‘like I was up there in space and just my mind was active’ and a ‘feeling where I felt I had left my body and viewed it from the other side of the room.’ (Ring, pp45-46). There seem to be varying degrees of this experience. Some people describe actually seeing the room which their body was in, from another, usually higher, perspective and some of these people also report seeing their actual bodies. Many of these people felt that their senses were actually enhanced and everything was brighter, clearer. A fever victim reported it being ‘very, very bright, very bright,’ while a woman who nearly died in childbirth reported that ‘everything seemed to be lighter and brighter.’ (Ring, p48). On the other hand, some people do not report external sensory perceptions of any sort – they simply have a certainty that their awareness is no longer confined to their physical cells.
The third stage which Ring identifies, he names Entering the Darkness. This stage seems to be a transitional state, a journey from this world into the one beyond. 23% of Ring’s sample group got as far as this experience and they described it as floating in or travelling through a dimensionless black space which some described as a long, dark tunnel. The following accounts of the experience were given: ‘I seemed to go up into a spiral in a deep black, pitch black tunnel… you never saw anything so anything so dark in your life,’ ‘I remember going through… a very, very dark tunnel…. It started at a narrow point and became wider and wider.’ (Ring, pp53-54). Feelings of peacefulness and serenity are also emphasised in this stage, the darkness often seems to be described as being very comfortable.
In the penultimate stage, reported by 16% of Ring’s sample group, people report seeing an intensely ‘brilliant golden light.’ (Ring, p57). While the light is described as being amazingly bright, its radiance is not a painful one at all. It generally seems that people find the light incredibly beautiful and appealing. The emergence into light from darkness seems to mentally signify the transition from the dying experience into the beginning of a new life in the world beyond. Those people interviewed with religious mindsets tended to report this stage as a manifestation of God’s divine light and two reported actually experiencing a vision of Jesus.
The final stage identified by Ring, experienced by 10% of his sample group, he calls Entering the Light. At this point, people describe actually entering into the world from which the light emanates, seeing colours and objects beyond anything in the normal world. Ring also reports that ‘five people claimed to see beautiful flowers here and four were aware of lovely music.’ (Ring, p60). It is also in this stage that people reported being greeted by dead loved ones. The experience of this fifth stage appears to be so overwhelmingly pleasant and positive, that many people feel resentment at being torn away from it and brought back to the realm of the living, at least two people reprimanding their surgeons, asking ‘Why did you bring me back?’ (Ring, p61).
It is very interesting to note how consistent these accounts are within themselves. The many similar (or even identical) reports seem to strongly suggest some genuine voyage into another realm. It is also interesting to observe how some elements of these reports fit in very easily with shamans’ accounts of their NDEs, while others seem to be mutually exclusive. For an example of how the differing cultural accounts complement each other, compare the following description by Essie Parrish with the features of Ring’s fourth and fifth stages.
‘I walked and I walked and I walked. Which is the right way? East is the right way to go to heaven…. I walked eastward… and there were… flowers and flowers and flowers out of this world. And there is a white light at the centre.’
The similarities are evident (and, incidentally, I might suggest that the association of a heavenly bright light and the east comes from the position of the rising sun). On the other hand, nowhere in any of the Western psychological/ medical literature that I read did I encounter any descriptions of a river or piece of water. The reasons why this may be the case are interesting to consider. It may be something to do with different cultural perspectives – maybe in today’s modern, industrialised West, we are more distant from natural images such as that of a river. Maybe we replace this part of the journey with a black void, symbolic of the void which our separation from the natural environment has left in our society.
It could also be possible that the journey is simply observed differently by those with a greater propensity for ‘shamanic consciousness.’ Maybe such people have a little more control over the experience and so observe their environment in a different manner. It may also be possible that such people are travelling to roughly the same place but simply take a different path. All of this, however, is simply conjecture and speculation.
In today’s culture, medical cases provide some of the clearest accounts of explorations into the realms beyond the physical plane. However, in addition to these and perhaps more controversially, it is also quite common for people experimenting with psychedelic substances to report mind states characteristic of NDEs. The dissociative anaesthetic drug ketamine seems particularly likely to lead to such experiences. Karl Jansen, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has written extensively on the subject. Jansen states that ‘the near death experience is an altered state of being that can be reached in various ways, including through ketamine…. All the features of a classical NDE can be reproduced in some people when ketamine is given at the right dose in the right set and setting.’ (Jansen, 2001, pp92-93). Jansen draws some parallels between ketamine and certain suicide attempts as both ‘involve a self-induced form of ego-death.’ (Jansen, p94). He then points out that in Moody’s study, people described a dark, black space they travelled through as ‘a cave, a well, a trough, an enclosure, a tunnel, a funnel, a vacuum, a void, a sewer, a valley, and a cylinder’ and that ‘almost all of these expressions have also been used to describe the early phases of a ketamine journey.’ (Jansen, p95). On top of this, Jansen points out that in both states, ‘there may be an inability to feel pain, clarity of thought, apparent separation from the body… visions of landscapes, angels, beings of light, people including partners, parents, teachers and friends (who may be alive at the time) and religious of mythical figures.’ (Jansen, p95).
This is something which I can verify from my own personal experience whilst under the influence of the drug. This is probably a large part of my reason for choosing NDEs as my research topic. Near-death experiencer’s certainty of the veracity of what they had been through rang a bell with me. I recollected, while using ketamine, feeling an instinctive certainty that I was in a death-like state of consciousness. In fact, the first couple of times that I used it, I remember thinking that I was actually dead. I can also distinctly recall hearing an intense buzzing noise all around me, as did other users interviewed by Jansen.
Using Ring’s system of stages as a guide, I can certify that I have experienced the first one, noting deep sensations of peace and well-being. I won’t place too much emphasis on this, however, as this is not exactly extraordinary. Several times, I have experienced being somehow separated from my physical body, observing the room I was in from a point some feet above the position where my body lay with its eyes closed. I cannot actually recall having looked at my body while in these states (probably thankfully – I doubt I looked too pretty). On one occasion in particular, I remember travelling through the wall of the room which my body was lying in, through other houses until I realised that I was in another living room about halfway down the block. Upon this realisation, I reflexively activated a sort of retraction back to my body. The way this worked very strongly reminded me of accounts of a luminous thread which is said to connect the spirit to the body in out of body experiences. When I became aware of where I was and wanted to return to my body, I felt myself instantaneously pulled back in a way that reminded me of retracting a vacuum cleaner cord.
On other occasions, I have felt myself travelling through something like a long, dark tunnel. The environment is empty. Blackness doesn’t seem like a strong enough word, as there’s such an absolute void that even blackness is absent. Whenever I have entered this environment, I have always felt myself moving at a very high speed, reminiscent pf a particularly fast elevator. This seems to be quite a contrast to Ring’s accounts of people calmly floating in the blackness. It is also difficult to integrate with my perception that the environment is entirely without dimension. It seems that dimensionlessness and movement should be mutually exclusive principle but somehow this was not the case and there did not seem to be any contradiction at the time.
Although I cannot recall ever having observed a light, I have had encounters with people on the other side of this journey, normally living friends, or figures, which I recognise as having being archetypal in my mind since a young age, such as comic-book superheroes.
I understand that some people would seek to discard such accounts as being drug-induced delusions. However, Jansen is actually one of the most cautious writers on the subject that I have encountered. He is not quick to jump to any conclusions and does not seem eager to prove any particular point. He investigates the issue at hand with an open mind and considers psychological and neurological causes for people’s experiences rather than taking the easy option of putting them down to a ‘spiritual’ journey beyond explanation.
In considering psychological reasons for the broad similarity of near death experiences, Jansen develops an idea of Freud’s, pointing out that ‘some near-death experiences may be a re-activation of birth memories or an actual re-experiencing of parts of the process in symbolic form.’ Additionally, ‘psychedelic experiences have led some people to conclude that birth and death are seen as the same process at the unconscious level…. If being born is experienced as dying by the baby, then we are already in the “after-life” and the birth process will have formed our images of what progression to a “next life” is like.’ (Jansen, p108). This is an alluring and captivating idea. One can see how feelings of absolute peace and contentment could be analogous to the state of the child in the womb, wonting for nothing, and how a journey through a long dark tunnel into the light could represent the actual birthing process.
However, while this is a very interesting idea, I am not personally satisfied with it as a complete explanation. For one thing, it does not give any explanation for out of body experiences on an earthly level, such as seeing your own body. On another level, the pain experienced in the birthing process seems entirely absent from the vast majority of NDEs. Maybe an investigation into NDEs of people born by Caesarean section or other non-traditional birthing methods could shed some light on this issue.
Jansen also goes into a discussion about possible neurochemical similarities between ketamine experiences and NDEs, too lengthy and scientific to repeat in full here. To summarise very briefly, ketamine is known to block NMDA-PCP receptors in the brain, receptors that play ‘important roles in thinking, memory, emotion, language, sensation, and perception.’ (Jansen, p115). Jansen points out that similar neurochemical effects may be brought about by ‘a sudden fall in oxygen or blood sugar’ (Jansen, p116), likely to occur in at least some near death states.
I can certainly believe that there may well be some scientific, chemical aspects to NDEs, although I am not convinced that all the answers that we are looking for can be found within that sphere of investigation. I think that the study of these areas of the experiences in tandem with a mindset open to the possibility of the spirit and willing to value subjective experience may be very important for our future. If we can synthesize our western scientific viewpoint with the magickal worldview of more ancient tribal cultures, I believe that we may all start to learn a lot more from one another. Our beliefs could become complementary rather than conflicting and we could all begin to make great advances of our understanding of the world. Our western society in particular may learn to overcome its fear of death and denial of a world beyond and then our scientific advances may also gain some degree of spiritual balance.
Bibliography:
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Jansen, Karl, M.D., Ph.D., Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), 2001.
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Kalweit, Holger, Dreamtime & Inner Space: The World of the Shaman, 1984.
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Ring, Kenneth, Ph.D., Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980.
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Sabom, Michael B., M.D., Recollections of Death, Corgi Books, 1982.
