by Jeffrey Long
Although NDErs tend to become more compassionate and loving, the NDERF study shows that the changes experienced by NDErs may not be well received by those around them. Friends and family members may find it difficult to relate to changes in values and interests that take place as a result of a near-death experience. Also, NDErs may be less willing to tolerate relationships that are unloving. One NDEr named Joyce summed it up succinctly:
I think it planted a seed that helped me choose better partners for myself and never to be in another abusive relationship.
Overall, though, NDErs tend to become increasingly loving and accepting of themselves. This is especially noticeable if their NDE resulted from a suicide attempt, in which case the NDEr will rarely attempt suicide again.6
A study from 1975, before near-death experiences were well known, presented the results of interviews with seven of only ten known survivors of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. All seven of these suicide attempters described aftereffects of spiritual rebirth and transformed lives. As one jumper said, “It affirmed my belief—there is a higher spiritual world. I experienced a transcendence—in that moment I was refilled with new hope and purpose of being alive.”7
On rare occasions I receive e-mails from people, often in the midst of depression, wondering if they should try suicide as a way to induce a near-death experience. My response is an immediate “absolutely no.” I encourage those who are depressed to seek counseling and also to discuss their life issues with their health-care team. People who had near-death experiences as a result of suicide attempts almost uniformly believe that their suicide attempts were a serious mistake. A personal experience of NDE should never be sought by creating a life-threatening event.
HEALING POWER OF NDES
As a physician, I am fascinated by NDE accounts suggesting unexpected healings. These inexplicable healings are uncommon but nevertheless deserve mention. I cannot claim with certainty that inexplicable healings occur after NDEs, but the case reports we have suggest this might be happening. One thing I can be certain of from my research is that the possibility of inexplicable healings deserves more attention in NDE research than it has received in the past.
Anita is from Hong Kong and was dying from stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. To say she was dying is no exaggeration: the senior cancer doctor gave her thirty-six hours to live. Anita became unconscious. She had an out-of-body experience and was able to see her doctor talking to her husband about forty feet down the hall outside her room. She later verified her OBE observations with her husband, who was “shocked.” The healing associated with her near-death experience is among the most dramatic ever reported. Anita tells what happened:
I was made to understand that, as tests had been taken for my organ functions (and the results were not out yet), that if I chose life, the results would show that my organs were functioning normally. If I chose death, the results would show organ failure as the cause of death, due to cancer. I was able to change the outcome of the tests by my choice!
I made my choice, and as I started to wake up (in a very confused state, as I could not at that time tell which side of the veil I was on), the doctors came rushing into the room with big smiles on their faces, saying to my family, “Good news—we got the results, and her organs are functioning—we can’t believe it! Her body really did seem like it had shut down!”
After that, I began to recover rapidly. The doctors had been waiting for me to become stable before doing a lymph node biopsy to track the type of cancer cells, and they could not even find a lymph node big enough to suggest cancer. (Upon entering the hospital my body was filled with swollen lymph nodes.) They did a bone marrow biopsy, again to find the cancer activity so they could adjust the chemotherapy according to the disease, and there wasn’t any in the bone marrow. The doctors were very confused but put it down to me suddenly responding to the chemo. Because they themselves were unable to understand what was going on, they made me undergo test after test, all of which I passed with flying colors, and clearing every test empowered me even more! I had a full body scan, and because they could not find anything, they made the radiologist repeat it again!”
Because of my experience, I am now sharing with everyone I know that miracles are possible in your life every day. After what I have seen, I realize that absolutely anything is possible, and that we did not come here to suffer. Life is supposed to be great, and we are very, very loved. The way I look at life has changed dramatically, and I am so glad to have been given a second chance to experience “heaven on earth.”
One case report of incredible healing after a near-death experience came from Geralyn. At the age of thirteen, Geralyn was fighting for her life. She had the most advanced stage of a highly aggressive malignancy called Burkitt’s lymphoma. Both her near-death experience and her healing were dramatic:
It was three months into being diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma. At the time, due to my age (thirteen), I was not told of the severity of the illness. Only my parents and elders in my family knew that I was given a 1 percent chance of survival. In fact, the doctors told them that they should prepare for my “arrangements” as they believed I was not going to survive this illness. The disease had ravished my body, and the spleen, liver, and intestines were filled with tumors.
One evening, while hospitalized, I was eating some popcorn when suddenly I began to feel this immense pain in my stomach. I felt the need to pass my bowels but could not. Two days later I still could not and began regurgitating my food. It was discovered that a large tumor was blocking my bowels. I was immediately sent to surgery.
During the surgery I died. For how long, I cannot say, but I had no sensation of passing. I went from lying on the gurney to floating in the air above the doctors. I watched as they pulled out my intestines, carefully laying them to the side of my body, and then they began racing around (I presume in an attempt to revive me). During this, I began rising, and all at once it seemed as though I knew everything there was to know. It seemed as if all the mysteries of the world were being revealed. I understood science, math, life! Simultaneously, I could see people below me in other rooms; I saw my grandmother and great-aunt crying outside the operating area. I saw other patients being treated in other surgery rooms. I saw people outside the hospital. I saw so much, and I continued to rise.
Then as instantly as I rose, I was instantly present within something that resembled a cloud. I don’t say it was a cloud, but it was bright, white, and soft. I felt the total embrace of love. And I knew I was in a place of great safety and warmth. I saw what could have been angels, three. They had great peace about them, and they were part of this “cloud,” as if attached directly to it. They didn’t say anything to me, yet I felt the grandness of them and their joy. I was happy, peaceful, and desired to stay amongst them.
Suddenly a large hand came towards me. I can’t even express its size as everything there was more than words could express. All I know is that it was a nonthreatening hand, and it glowed with an overpowering light. Then I heard a voice that seemed soft yet authoritative tell me, “My child, go back, for you have much work left to do!” I was instantly back in my body. Instantly! When I awoke, I told the doctors what I saw them doing to me during the operation. They were amazed at my precise [description] of their work. Actually, they had removed two and a half feet of my intestines. Still, they didn’t believe the story. I also remember feeling angry that I had to return. I knew that I was healed. The doctors were awestruck to find that after only one chemo treatment the tumors were gone. And that treatment was given against my will as I was too young for them to hear my protest. And thirty-seven years later, I am still here.
Another story of unexplained healing came from a man named Denver who lived in Florida. Denver was in the hospital with blood clots in his lungs, a very dangerous condition that often leads to death. As Denver struggled to breathe, the doctor made the decision to give him high doses of blood thinner.
Although the blood thinner began
to treat the clots, another equally serious problem arose. Denver’s stomach and other organs began to hemorrhage due to the large dose of blood thinner.
Denver’s mother was told that the young man had only a 15 percent chance of surviving. During the night while hovering close to death, Denver had a near-death experience. In this NDE he was asked if he was “prepared to leave.” He declined, and continued to cling to life. The doctor decided to move him to a larger regional hospital, where his chances of survival were greater.
Denver was rushed to the regional hospital. He tells the rest of the story:
When I arrived forty-five minutes later at the regional hospital, and the expert began running X-rays and other tests, he called the doctor in Niceville very frustrated. The [Niceville] doctor quoted him as saying, “Doctor, you send me a dying boy needing surgery, and I’ll be damned if I can find a thing wrong with him!” The doctor was floored! Later during my follow-up visits to see the doctor after being released from ICU, the doctor kept repeating that he saw no other alternative but to call this a miracle from God!
Many such examples of apparent unexplained healings associated with near-death experiences have been shared with NDERF. Time and again the people who write these case studies use words like miracle or I was healed.
One of the best documented examples of healing following a near-death experience was reported by Dr. Penny Sartori and associates.8 The NDE she described was part of a prospective study of near-death experiences. This case report was remarkable both for the accurate out-of-body observations during the NDE and also for the inexplicable healing following the NDE.
The patient in this case report had emergency surgery for bowel cancer. As he was recovering from surgery, his clinical condition worsened and he became comatose. While deeply unconscious, and with his eyes closed, he had a near-death experience. His NDE included an out-of-body experience with detailed observations of events going on around his body. After his recovery he described what he saw happening around him while he was unconscious. His OBE observations were confirmed as accurate by those caring for him during his near-death experience.
This near-death experiencer had been born with cerebral palsy. As a result, he had a contracted and deformed hand, which throughout his life he had not been able to open completely. After his NDE he was able to open and use his hand for the first time in his life. This medically inexplicable healing was corroborated by his family and health-care team.
I don’t know how these healings take place or even if they take place as a result of the NDEs. I do know, however, that a significant number of NDErs express a belief that they were healed during their NDE, which is reason for further research. Exploring these seemingly miraculous healings further will be a direction I take in the future.
Psychic Changes
There are many people who have a hard time accepting anything labeled “psychic.” I can understand this, as I felt that way before I started my research into near-death experiences. However, as I read more about NDEs I became aware of dozens of scholarly articles that described psychic NDE aftereffects.9
People who have near-death experiences often believe they have increased psychic abilities following their experience. These are not people who gaze into crystal balls or dress like gypsies. Rather, they are people who are ordinary to the core but with one great difference: their ordinary life has been touched by an extraordinary NDE. Following their NDEs, many describe such psychic abilities as empathy (the ability to tell how another person feels), intuition, or precognitive skills.
In the NDERF study, 45.0 percent of those surveyed answered “Yes” to the question “Did you have any psychic, paranormal, or other special gifts following the experience you did not have prior to the experience?” Of the remaining, 19.1 percent weren’t sure, and 35.9 percent answered “No.” Although a positive response of 45 percent is astounding, I think the actual number might be higher. Those NDErs who were small children at the time of the experience may not know if their current psychic gifts were present before the NDE. Also, some NDErs describe dramatically heightened psychic abilities immediately after their experiences that diminish in a variable amount of time.
Here are but a few of the many stories we have collected at NDERF. These examples will give you an idea of some of the psychic abilities described by NDErs.
Romona was in an aluminum boat that slammed into a barge and flipped over. Romona was trapped beneath the barge. Struggling to reach the surface, she ran out of air and felt herself leave her body. She said that she felt “fine and so happy” in this out-of-body state.
Rescued and resuscitated with CPR, Romona discovered that she had psychic aftereffects. One of her best examples came on the telephone with her sister. Romona tells the story:
My brother-in-law, [Bob], died in 2000. He did not believe in the afterlife. I was on the phone with my sister, [Marsha], who lived in Walnut Creek, California. All at once I only could see yellow, like someone put a yellow sheet of paper in front of my eyes. Then it was gone, and then my den appeared to be filled with bubbles, thousands of bubbles. This kept happening—the color yellow then gone, thousands of bubbles then gone. Then I had a voice in my head saying, “Tell her, tell her, tell her.” It became so loud I couldn’t even hear my sister anymore. I then said, “Marsha, I have to tell you something. It makes no sense, I am not crazy, but I have to tell you: yellow bubbles.” She couldn’t believe it. She was happy, so happy. She then told me one night that she and…Bob watched a movie called Houdini. Bob was making a comment of there being no afterlife. Marsha told him she would think of a secret word…and whoever went first—if there was an afterlife—to somehow get the secret word to the one left here. To my surprise those were the secret words: yellow bubbles. She picked them because it made no sense; nobody would ever just blurt out those words.
Marcia was under a one-and-a-half-ton structure when it collapsed. Marcia had an out-of-body experience, and then her late father and sister appeared to her. Her sister had died of brain cancer several years earlier and her father had died about four months earlier. Her father kept telling her to breathe.
Marcia survived. After her NDE Marcia had premonitions about future events. This is one of the more striking:
I woke one morning and told my husband that a friend and business associate of my husband’s had died. I had talked to this man on the phone at some point over a fifteen-year period, but I [had] never met him. He wasn’t someone that I thought about. I just matter-offactly told my husband that he died. A short time later my husband got a phone call, and a friend told him that this man had died…. When my husband got the phone call and the man told him who had died, my husband remarked that he already knew about it. Then my husband remembered that it was I who had told him. I have had other premonitions about events that were to happen, but they weren’t life-shattering things. I just knew different things that were to happen prior to them actually happening.
I love the casual way in which NDErs tell these psychic events. As one NDEr told my coauthor, “I have come to realize that we all have the ability to ‘read’ one another. There is just something about the near-death experience that triggers that ability in us.”10
Although there has been a substantial amount of research into psychic near-death-experience aftereffects, few researchers have directly tested the psychic abilities of NDErs. This will certainly be an important area for future NDE research.
If I have discovered anything by starting NDERF, it’s that near-death experiences touch on a lifetime of questions that, to answer one, leads to a dozen more.
Decreased Fear of Death
Few of us experience mortality as directly as do people who have had near-death experiences. Yet despite having the frightful experience of nearly dying, most NDErs do not report an increase in their fear of death, but rather a decrease in their fear or a loss of the fear altogether. This is a consistent finding in a number of previously published studies.11 Here, in brief, is what
NDErs have to say about death:
Catherine, who nearly died after surgery, reported,
I had always been terrified of death, of oblivion. I no longer fear death.
Lauren was felt by the EMS to be dead on arrival after a severe accident. She wrote,
I am no longer afraid of death. I know now in my soul that there is so much more after life. I feel that once I have learned what it is I am supposed to learn or a task that I must complete, that I will be rewarded with a life after death!
Sharla, who nearly died of respiratory arrest, wrote,
The most significant part of the experience is that there is (to me) nothing to fear of death.
The fear of death is one of humanity’s most powerful sources of anxiety. There are many people today who are so fearful of death that they are unable to fully live their lives. For these people, this fear may extend beyond the fear of their own death; they may fret endlessly about the life and health of others. The message NDErs share, including their consistent description of reduced or absent fear of death, is so powerful that I am not surprised when people tell me that their personal fear of death was diminished just by reading accounts of near-death experiences.
Those who have a near-death experience may still fear the actual process of dying. Dying often involves discomfort, though modern medicine has made tremendous progress in easing that discomfort. Dying also involves a separation from our loved ones and all that is familiar in the world. However, the great majority of NDErs believe they experienced firsthand what lies beyond death. And what they experienced beyond death’s door leaves many of them fearless when they think about death. For most NDErs, their lack of fear of death is associated with a conviction that death is not final and that a wonderful afterlife is real.