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What to Expect
Join me on a journey of discovery! A journey in which you will encounter first-hand reports from survivors of Near Death Experiences; from beautiful, transcendent stories of love and fellowship to devastating accounts of pain and terror. Together, we will uncover recurring patterns and elements in these accounts, and build from them a novel, unifying framework through which to view all NDEs. We will discuss possible explanations for these experiences, what this might mean for an existence after death, and the implications of these conclusions for our lives in the present.
What is an NDE?
An occurrence in which a person comes very close to dying and has memories of a spiritual experience during the time when death was near.
At least, that’s the “textbook” definition. On a less clinical level, these experiences can include feelings of peace, a sense of detachment from the body, a sense of moving through a tunnel or into a bright light, and sometimes even encounters with deceased loved ones or spiritual figures.
Yet, it’s also true that only an estimated 15% of the global population has had an NDE. Many experience nothing but a loss of time between death and resuscitation. Any framework attempting to explain and give context to Near Death Experiences must address this fact.
Being of Light
A being made entirely of light, radiating compassion, warmth and love.
Life Review
A complete look at everything from birth to death, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Return to the Body
Voluntary or obligatory return to the physical body before resuscitation.
Transcendence
Some NDEs are filled with a love unlike any experienced in this life. An overwhelming love that forgives all wrongs, transcends space and time, and heals all pain.
The Void
Some NDEs are lonely; isolated in a desolate, dark void. The survivor is fully conscious, aware of their hopeless state, and powerless to change their fate.
Evil
Some NDEs involve terrifying sounds and apparitions. The survivor may experience extreme heat or unbearable cold, excruciating pain, or even torture at the hands of evil, devious creatures.
Veridical Perception
During an out-of-body experience, NDE survivors have reported observing events, people and conversations both around their body and in remote locations. Hospital patients have described the placement of medical staff, procedures, and medical equipment with almost impossible accuracy. One cardiologist studying this phenomenon described these observations as so detailed and accurate that they could be used to teach medical students.
What do survivors say?
Many in the scientific community are quick to dismiss NDEs as subjective experiences manufactured in the mind of the individual, influenced by their preconceived beliefs. Aside from gaslighting the thousands of NDE survivors around the world, this position is also completely out of step with the responses of the survivors themselves.
According to five independent, peer-reviewed studies, only 27% of NDE survivors held a belief in life after death prior to their experience. This means that 73% of survivors surveyed had no preconceived belief in an afterlife. So if NDEs were merely manufactured in the minds of those predisposed to believe in life after death, then these 73% of survivors should not have had an NDE.
In fact, these five independent studies report that 90% of NDE survivors surveyed now believe in life after death; in one of these studies, the figure was as high as 100%. This means that more than 63% of NDE survivors were so convinced of the reality of their experience that they changed their worldview, and now believe in life after death.
I believe that we owe it to these thousands of NDE survivors to examine their accounts objectively, and to allow their experiences to inform, and perhaps even change, our perspective on life after death. This book is dedicated to this approach and to validating the experiences of NDE survivors around the world. I hope you will join me on this journey.
Who should read this book?
This book is intended for anyone with an interest in near-death experiences or other similar “spiritual” experiences. Whether you are curious and vaguely aware, or well-read and intimately familiar with the subject, anyone who is open to objectively following the evidence from these experiences wherever it leads is likely to find this book engaging and exciting. If you have had an NDE yourself, whether pleasant, distressing or somewhere in between, you may find comfort and understanding if you have not found it elsewhere. If you are a professional NDE researcher, this book may offer you a new lens through which to view near-death experiences. But if you have already presupposed that NDEs are merely visions or dreams fabricated in the mind of the individual, and you are a priori committed to your perspective regardless of any evidence to the contrary, then you will probably find no pleasure in reading this book.
How I got here
First and foremost, I am NOT a critically acclaimed or New York Times bestselling author. In fact, I’ve never written a book in my life. So please don’t read this book expecting to be blown away by my mastery of prose. This isn’t going to read like the typical “About the Author” section of a more accomplished writer. However, allow me to tell you about something in which I do excel.
From an early age I discovered that I was what you might call a “creator” or “tinkerer”. Growing up, I expressed this passion through drawing, then later through music as I picked up the piano, guitar, and many other instruments, then joined choir, marching band, and musical theatre. As my toolkit evolved and my knowledge matured, I began to dabble in electronics, building my first computer in the mid 90’s before that became a big thing. This led to a career in electrical and computer engineering, and a job designing consumer electronics for a living. In my spare time, I learned to express my creative itch through website design (I wrote this entire site from scratch), music composition, and eventually 3D modelling and animation.
With an engineering background and so much experience designing and creating things in a variety of media, I have developed a keen awareness of how things work, and a strong intuition into how they are created, assembled, and work together. Armed with this knowledge, I have cultivated a powerful aptitude for “root cause” analysis. This means that I am well trained and experienced in pattern recognition, inferential analysis, and the investigation of evidence. I possess an acute ability to extrapolate accurate, meaningful information from an aggregated set of data points. And it is precisely this ability that has led me to write this book.
A few years ago my wife introduced me to a few Near Death Experience accounts. I had heard about them before, but had never really given them much time or consideration. But as I read and watched more first-hand accounts online, I developed an insatiable desire to know more about them, how they work, and what they mean. My desire to understand the cause of these experiences drove me to read countless articles, books, and even academic publications on the subject. But in my research, I discovered a major problem that hangs like a dark cloud over the whole topic: some of these accounts contradict each other.
As an engineer, my respect for the laws of logic, including the law of non-contradiction, is paramount to my fundamental view of the world. Needless to say, the myriad contradictions in NDEs have been unsettling to me. And yet professional NDE researchers seem willing to overlook these contradictions and affirm the undeniable truth of every experience and the truth claims upon which they stand. I found no one willing to ask the hard question: how do we reconcile these contradictions and formulate a coherent framework through which we can view all NDEs without abandoning the fundamental laws of logic?
About a year into my research, I discovered what I believe to be the answer to this dilemma after reading one book in particular. I believe this book offers a glimpse into the reality that drives these experiences, and it is the nature of this reality that I believe allows us to build this framework. I am now convinced that all NDEs, whether pleasant, distressing or anything in between, can be unified under a single framework, and I believe I have identified recurring patterns, elements, and events which help to distinguish between NDEs within this framework. Part of the purpose of this book is to build a case for this framework so that you can decide for yourself whether it has sufficient explanatory power and scope. At one point in the book, I even invite you to stop reading and go explore NDE accounts in order to validate the framework for yourself.
As we will discuss in the book, I believe that the framework, taken to its logical conclusion, has implications for all of us, both here in this life and possibly even after death. So the second purpose of this book is to outline what I believe those implications are, and allow you to choose how you will respond to them. In the end, it is up to you to decide what you will believe, but by the end of this book you should have a crystal clear understanding of what I have come to believe about NDEs and why I believe it. I hope you find it interesting and memorable. Thank you for your interest and support.
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Dr. Moody went on to investigate hundreds of other NDE reports and published the first piece of scholarly literature on the subject in 1975. In fact, it was Dr. Moody who coined the term “near-death experience.” And his research set in motion a frenzy of investigation by other medical professionals into this incredible phenomenon, resulting in a myriad of other books and publications on the subject.
But not everyone was immediately convinced. Moody stated that his Christian upbringing likely influenced his opinion on the existence of an afterlife, so many attributed his belief in a spiritual explanation for NDEs to the influence of his preconceived worldview. As a result, many medical professionals, who had not already presupposed the existence of an afterlife, decided to investigate the phenomenon for themselves. Miller highlights some of the most prominent.
Cardiologist, Maurice Rawlings, was fully committed to a materialistic worldview, meaning that he denied the existence of anything immaterial or supernatural. Yet, he approached his investigation with an objective professionalism and published the results of his study in 1978, in which he revealed that the evidence he uncovered had convinced him of an immaterial afterlife, compelling him to reject materialism and adopt a worldview more consistent with the evidence. However, other materialists, such as cardiologists Michael Sabom, Pim van Lommel, and Penny Sartori, the last of whom initially dismissed NDEs as wishful thinking, began their own investigations with the intended purpose of refuting the supernatural explanation.
Dr. Sabom published his findings in 1981, after which he abandoned his materialistic worldview and came to believe that NDEs consist of genuine out of body experiences and present evidence of a supernatural world beyond our material universe. Even more than 20 years later, in the wake of a scientific and technological revolution, van Lommel, who published his results in 2001, and Sartori, who published in 2003, both came to accept the supernatural explanation for NDEs, and abandoned their materialistic worldviews.
But, it’s not just the medical and research professionals who have been convinced of a life after death by these accounts. The survivors themselves show a drastic increase in belief in an afterlife upon returning from their experience. In fact, according to five independent studies reviewed by Miller, only 27% of NDE patients believed in an afterlife before their experience, yet that percentage jumped to at least 90% after the event, even when surveyed upwards of 20 years later. And in one study, belief in an afterlife jumped from 38% to 100%! These statistics hold true even in van Lommel’s research, in which the majority of his Dutch patients were atheists prior to their experience.
In fact, as far as I know, most scholars who have published literature on NDEs and attempted to explain them in terms of purely natural processes already held materialistic worldviews; they had already presupposed that the supernatural does not exist and that there must be a natural explanation for these phenomena. So we shouldn’t be surprised when their conclusion precludes the supernatural. Unlike the earliest researchers who willingly followed the evidence away from their materialistic worldviews, many materialistic scholars refuse to make the same journey.
But here is my question for those who are willing to think critically: If Dr. Moody was met with skepticism on account of confirmation bias from his presupposed worldview, should we not hold those materialistic scholars who dismiss immaterial explanations for NDEs to the same level of skepticism? Are we to believe that non-theistic scholars are immune to confirmation bias simply because their worldview presupposes the absence of an immaterial reality? I think not. Regardless, we need not appeal to an argument from authority. I think the evidence speaks for itself, and I believe it’s worth your time to familiarize yourself with that evidence. So let’s take a closer look. Then you can draw your own conclusions.
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