The Science of Near-Death Experiences Quotes

“We saw in them a greater interest in spirituality and questions about the purpose of life, as well as a greater acceptance of, and love for, oneself and others. The conversations also revealed that people had acquired enhanced intuitive feelings after an NDE, along with a strong sense of connectedness with others and with nature. Or, as many of them put it, they had acquired “paranormal gifts.” The sudden occurrence of this enhanced intuition, or non-local perception, can be quite problematic, as people suddenly have a very acute sense of others, which can be extremely intimidating. The integration and acceptance of an NDE is a process that may take many years because of its far-reaching impact on people’s pre-NDE understanding of life and value system. Finally, it is quite remarkable to see a cardiac arrest lasting just a few minutes give rise to such a lifelong process of transformation. For obvious reasons most people feel nostalgic about their NDE because of the unforgettable feelings of peace, acceptance, and love they encountered during the experience, and the feeling of being forced to return back into the body. We identified a distinct pattern of change in people with an NDE and revealed that integrating these changes into daily life is a long and arduous process because there is at first hardly any acceptance by oneself as well as by others, like doctors, nurses, family members, partners, and friends. This lack of acceptance can make the process of coming to terms with the experience difficult and painful. So the NDE is often a traumatic event with many years of strong feelings of depression, homesickness and loneliness.6”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“search for knowledge; and greater appreciation for nature.6 These aftereffects have been corroborated by interviews with near-death experiencers’ significant others and by long-term longitudinal studies.17 Negative Effects Although NDErs sometimes feel distress if the NDE conflicts with their previously held beliefs and attitudes, the emphasis in the popular media on the positive benefits of NDEs inhibits those who are having problems from seeking help. Sometimes people who have had NDEs may doubt their sanity, yet they are often afraid of rejection or ridicule if they discuss this fear with friends or professionals. Sometimes NDErs do receive negative reactions from professionals when they describe their experiences, which discourages them even further from seeking help in understanding the experience.18 Family and friends may find it difficult to understand the NDEr’s new beliefs and behavior, as many of their new attitudes and beliefs are so different from those around them. Difficulty reconciling the new attitudes and beliefs with the expectations of family and friends can interfere with maintaining old roles and lifestyle, which no longer have the same meaning. NDErs may find it impossible to communicate to others the meaning and impact of their NDE on their lives.18 Researchers have noted that the value incongruities between NDErs and their families lead to a relatively high divorce rate among NDErs. The effects of an NDE “may include long-term depression, broken relationships, disrupted career, feelings of severe alienation, an inability to function in the world, long years of struggling with the keen sense of altered reality.”19”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“However, NDE-like phenomena are almost never seen in temporal lobe seizures, and electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes typically elicits fragmented bits of music, isolated and repetitive scenes that seemed familiar, hearing voices, experiencing fear or other negative emotions, or seeing bizarre, dream-like imagery, in addition to a wide range of somatic sensations that are never reported in NDEs.17 These putative neurological mechanisms, for which there is little if any empirical evidence, may suggest brain pathways through which NDEs are expressed or interpreted, but do not necessarily imply causal mechanisms.17 EFFECTS OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES Positive Effects Regardless of their cause, NDEs can permanently and dramatically alter the individual experiencer’s attitudes, beliefs, and values. The literature on the aftereffects of NDEs has focused on the beneficial personal transformations that often follow. A recent review of research into the characteristic changes following NDEs found the most commonly reported to be loss of fear of death; strengthened belief in life after death; feeling specially favored by God; a new sense of purpose or mission; heightened self-esteem; increased compassion and love for others; lessened concern for material gain, recognition, or status; greater desire to serve others; increased ability to express feelings; greater appreciation of, and zest for, life; increased focus on the present; deeper religious faith or heightened spirituality; search for knowledge; and greater appreciation for nature.6 These aftereffects have been corroborated by interviews with near-death experiencers’ significant others and by long-term longitudinal studies.17 Negative Effects Although NDErs sometimes feel distress if the NDE conflicts with their previously held beliefs and attitudes, the emphasis in the popular media on the positive benefits of NDEs inhibits those who are having problems from seeking help. Sometimes people who have had NDEs may doubt their sanity, yet they are often afraid of rejection or ridicule if they discuss this fear with friends or professionals. Sometimes NDErs do receive negative reactions from professionals when they describe their experiences, which discourages them even further from seeking help in understanding the experience.18 Family and friends may find it difficult to understand the NDEr’s new beliefs and behavior, as many of their new attitudes and beliefs are so different from those around them. Difficulty reconciling the new attitudes and beliefs with the expectations of family and friends can interfere with maintaining old roles and lifestyle, which no longer have the same meaning. NDErs may find it impossible to communicate to others the meaning and impact of their NDE on their lives.18 Researchers have noted that the value incongruities between NDErs and their families lead to a relatively high divorce rate among NDErs. The effects of an NDE “may include long-term depression, broken relationships, disrupted career, feelings of severe alienation, an inability to function in the world, long years of struggling with the keen sense of altered reality.”19”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“However, NDE-like phenomena are almost never seen in temporal lobe seizures, and electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes typically elicits fragmented bits of music, isolated and repetitive scenes that seemed familiar, hearing voices, experiencing fear or other negative emotions, or seeing bizarre, dream-like imagery, in addition to a wide range of somatic sensations that are never reported in NDEs.17 These putative neurological mechanisms, for which there is little if any empirical evidence, may suggest brain pathways through which NDEs are expressed or interpreted, but do not necessarily imply causal mechanisms.17 EFFECTS OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES Positive Effects Regardless of their cause, NDEs can permanently and dramatically alter the individual experiencer’s attitudes, beliefs, and values. The literature on the aftereffects of NDEs has focused on the beneficial personal transformations that often follow. A recent review of research into the characteristic changes following NDEs found the most commonly reported to be loss of fear of death; strengthened belief in life after death; feeling specially favored by God; a new sense of purpose or mission; heightened self-esteem; increased compassion and love for others; lessened concern for material gain, recognition, or status; greater desire to serve others; increased ability to express feelings; greater appreciation of, and zest for, life; increased focus on the present; deeper religious faith or heightened spirituality; search for knowledge; and greater appreciation for nature.6 These aftereffects have been corroborated by interviews with near-death experiencers’ significant others and by long-term longitudinal studies.17 Negative Effects Although NDErs sometimes feel distress if the NDE conflicts with their previously held beliefs and attitudes, the emphasis in the popular media on the positive benefits of NDEs inhibits those who are having problems from seeking help. Sometimes people who have had NDEs may doubt their sanity, yet they are often afraid of rejection or ridicule if they discuss this fear with friends or professionals. Sometimes NDErs do receive negative reactions from professionals when they describe their experiences, which discourages them even further from seeking help in understanding the experience.18 Family and friends may find it difficult to understand the NDEr’s new beliefs and behavior, as many of their new attitudes and beliefs are so different from those around them.”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“However, many NDEs are recounted by individuals who had no metabolic or organic malfunctions that might have caused hallucinations, and patients who receive medications in fact report fewer NDEs than do patients who receive no medication.14 Furthermore, organic brain malfunctions generally produce clouded thinking, irritability, fear, belligerence, and idiosyncratic visions, quite unlike the exceptionally clear thinking, peacefulness, calm, and predictable content that typify the NDE. Visions in patients with delirium are generally of living persons, whereas those of patients with a clear sensorium as they approach death are almost invariably of deceased persons. Patients who are febrile or anoxic when near death report fewer NDEs and less elaborate experiences than do patients who remain drug-free and are neither febrile nor anoxic. That is, drug- or metabolically-induced delirium, rather than causing NDEs in fact inhibits them from occurring or from being recalled.14 Neurochemistry NDEs have been speculatively attributed to a number of neurotransmitters in the brain, most frequently endorphins or other endogenous opioids, a putative ketamine-like endogenous neuroprotective agent acting on N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, serotonin, adrenaline, vasopressin, and glutamate. These speculations are based on hypothetical endogenous chemicals or effects that have not been shown to exist, and are not supported by any empirical data.17”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“Near-death experiences are important to physicians for three reasons. First, NDEs precipitate pervasive and durable changes in beliefs, attitudes, and values.6 Secondly, they may be confused with psychopathological states, yet have profoundly different sequelae requiring different therapeutic approaches.7 Third, clarification of their mechanisms may enhance our understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function.8 One of the problems with research into NDEs is that, with a few notable exceptions, almost all NDE research has been retrospective, raising the question of the reliability of the experiencer’s memories. Autobiographical memories are subject to distortion over years, and memories of unusual or traumatic events may be particularly unreliable as a result of emotional influences. However, memories of NDEs are experienced as “more real” than memories of other events,9 and memories of NDEs have been shown to be unchanged over a period of 20 years.10 EXPLANATORY MODELS Studies of near-death experiencers have shown them collectively to be psychologically healthy individuals who do not differ from comparison groups in age, gender, race, religion, religiosity, mental health, intelligence, neuroticism, extroversion, trait and state anxiety, or relevant Rorschach measures.11 Expectancy A plausible hypothesis postulates that near-death experiences are products of the imagination, constructed from one’s personal and cultural expectations, to protect oneself from facing the threat of death. Comparisons of NDE accounts from different cultures suggest that prior beliefs have some influence on the kind of experience a person will report following a close brush with death. However, individuals often report experiences that conflict with their specific religious and personal expectations of death; people who had no prior knowledge about NDEs describe the same kinds of experiences as do people who are quite familiar with the phenomenon, and the knowledge individuals had about NDEs previously does not seem to influence the details of their own experiences;”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“What should a physician do when a patient recovers from an almost fatal illness or injury and reports a near-death experience? From talking with thousands of such patients, I find most simply want someone to listen to them noncommittally. They want to talk about what happened to them and to ventilate the powerful emotions and memories associated with their near-death experience. After listening, it also helps to reassure the patient that he or she is not alone, that millions of other individuals have had such experiences. Listening and reassuring them helps set them on a lifelong course of integrating what for most is their most profound transcendent event. Intervening with their families can often save such patients considerable unnecessary discomfort and interpersonal conflicts. The family should know that the patient is not mentally ill nor are NDEs rare. Patients with near-death experiences are generally convinced from the outset that the experience was real and that they are not “crazy.” They often worry that other people will make fun of them or doubt their sanity.”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“They say that in the bright light they feel comfort, joy, peace, and love so intense as to be almost palpable. They say that they perceive the spirits of deceased loved ones, departed relatives, and friends who seem to be there to welcome them. These patients also say that they re-experience in vivid detail the events of their lives in a sort of holographic, full-color panorama. Although it takes only an instant, they report reviewing the actions of their lives empathically, from within the consciousness of others with whom they had interacted rather than from their original perspective. Patients differ as to how they got back. For some, at one moment they were immersed in the light and the next moment they were back in their hospital beds with no sense of a transition. Other patients say that they were told, perhaps by one of their deceased loved ones, that they had to go back; that they had things left to complete. Yet other patients say they were given a choice. They could either stay in the light and continue that experience or return to the life they had been living. Most commonly, these patients say that for themselves they would have preferred to stay in the light; however, they chose to go back for someone else, usually to raise their young children. Upon returning, these patients remark that their near-death experiences profoundly changed their lives. They say that their experiences convinced them personally that there is an afterlife so they no longer fear death. These patients say that whatever they might have been pursuing in their lives before—power, wealth, fame or something else—their experiences convinced them that the most important goal in life is to learn to love. Although they still find that goal as difficult to realize as anyone else, their near-death experiences commit them to pursuing love. Not everyone who recovers from a near-death event reports a near-death experience. Nor does everyone who has a near-death experience report the whole, prototypical series of events. Some recall only a brief out-of-body experience with a view of their own physical body below, followed by a quick return. Others get only as far as the dark passageway, while others proceed all the way into the light. We do not know the reasons for all these variations. Notably, much of what “common sense” suggests about near-death experiences turns out not to be true.”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences

“Nancy Evans Bush, MA, Previous President of IANDS, and Bruce Greyson, MD, recently retired Director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, in Chapter Ten skillfully present the little discussed “distressing near-death experiences” (DNDEs). Their review of over 30 years of NDEs literature concludes that DNDEs may occur as often as one in five cases and that both external and internal barriers to reporting them make them under-reported. The DNDE has distressing connotations to the hallmark events of the pleasurable NDE. The context of the DNDE is a “void” with feelings of aloneness, isolation, emptiness, even a sense of annihilation. Lastly, in the DNDE the “heavenly and redemptive” themes of most NDEs are replaced by a “hellish and damnation” experience. Much time and effort is required by these individuals to work through the debilitation and negative residua of the DNDEs. Three mechanisms often employed are “I needed that” in which the individual seeks to make amends in their life and become a better person. Movement to a dogmatic religious group is common. A second methodology is reductionism in which the DNDE is explained away or repudiated as a hallucination or an adverse drug reaction. A third group struggles for years trying to comprehend why the DNDE happened to them and why they cannot shake off its negative aftereffects. They often commit to long-term psychotherapy which is usually ineffective. Neither NDEs nor DNDEs are pre-conditioned by the conduct of an individual’s life—a saintly person may still have a DNDE while felons and misanthropes may experience pleasant, redemption-giving NDEs.”
― John C. Hagan III, The Science of Near-Death Experiences