ArticlePDF Available

Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology

Authors:

Abstract

Classical physics, anchored in materialist reductionism, offered adequate descriptions of everyday mechanics but ultimately proved insufficient for describing the mechanics of extremely high speeds or small sizes, and was supplemented nearly a century ago by quantum physics, which includes consciousness in its formulation. Materialist psychology, modeled on the reductionism of classical physics, likewise offered adequate descriptions of everyday mental functioning but ultimately proved insufficient for describing mentation under extreme conditions, such as the continuation of mental function when the brain is inactive or impaired, such as occurs near death. “Near-death experiences” include phenomena that challenge materialist reductionism, such as enhanced mentation and memory during cerebral impairment, accurate perceptions from a perspective outside the body, and reported visions of deceased persons, including those not previously known to be deceased. Complex consciousness, including cognition, perception, and memory, under conditions such as cardiac arrest and general anesthesia, when it cannot be associated with normal brain function, require a revised psychology anchored not in 19th-century classical physics but rather in 21st-century quantum physics that includes consciousness in its conceptual formulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Implications of Near-Death Experiences
for a Postmaterialist Psychology
Bruce Greyson
University of Virginia
Classical physics, anchored in materialist reductionism, offered adequate descriptions
of everyday mechanics but ultimately proved insufficient for describing the mechanics
of extremely high speeds or small sizes, and was supplemented nearly a century ago by
quantum physics, which includes consciousness in its formulation. Materialist psychol-
ogy, modeled on the reductionism of classical physics, likewise offered adequate
descriptions of everyday mental functioning but ultimately proved insufficient for
describing mentation under extreme conditions, such as the continuation of mental
function when the brain is inactive or impaired, such as occurs near death. “Near-death
experiences” include phenomena that challenge materialist reductionism, such as
enhanced mentation and memory during cerebral impairment, accurate perceptions
from a perspective outside the body, and reported visions of deceased persons, includ-
ing those not previously known to be deceased. Complex consciousness, including
cognition, perception, and memory, under conditions such as cardiac arrest and general
anesthesia, when it cannot be associated with normal brain function, require a revised
psychology anchored not in 19th-century classical physics but rather in 21st-century
quantum physics that includes consciousness in its conceptual formulation.
Keywords: materialism, reductionism, near-death experience, mind– body problem, consciousness
Until the early 20th century, classical me-
chanics was the foundation for all sciences on
the assumption that observations of all sciences
might someday be reduced to the laws of me-
chanics. At the heart of the classical worldview
was materialist reductionism, the idea that any
complex phenomenon could be understood by
reducing it to its individual components and
eventually down to elementary material parti-
cles. This worldview implied that all complex
psychological phenomena could ultimately be
understood in material terms.
This materialist worldview permeated psy-
chology as it did other sciences, even though
this reductionism required psychologists to fo-
cus exclusively on phenomena that could be
described objectively by independent observers
and to ignore consciousness. Materialist psy-
chology was epitomized by Watson (1914),
who asserted, “Psychology, as the behaviorist
views it, is a purely objective, experimental
branch of natural science which needs con-
sciousness as little as do the sciences of chem-
istry and physics” (p. 27). It is ironic that while
Watson was aligning behaviorist psychology
with classical mechanics, physicists were al-
ready moving beyond that model with a quan-
tum physics that could not be formulated with-
out reference to consciousness.
Classical dynamics adequately described
the motion of macroscopic objects moving at
everyday speeds; it was only the investigation
of extraordinary circumstances, involving ob-
jects moving with velocities approaching the
speed of light or the behavior of microscopic
wave-particles, that revealed the limits of the
classical model and the need for additional
explanatory paradigms. So too with the ques-
tion of the mind– brain relationship: It is the
exploration of extraordinary circumstances of
mental function that reveals the limitations of
the current model of mind– brain identity and
Bruce Greyson, Division of Perceptual Studies, Univer-
sity of Virginia.
Portions of this research were presented at the Columbia
University/Coudert Institute Joint Symposium, “Conscious-
ness, Spirituality, and Healing: A Post-Newtonian Psychol-
ogy” (Palm Beach, FL, March 27–29, 2009).
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Bruce Greyson, Division of Perceptual Studies,
University of Virginia Health System, 210 10th Street NE,
Suite 100, Charlottesville, VA 22902-5328. E-mail:
cbg4d@virginia.edu
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality © 2010 American Psychological Association
2010, Vol. 2, No. 1, 37–45 1941-1022/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0018548
37
the need for a more comprehensive explana-
tory model.
Near-Death Experiences
One such extraordinary circumstance calling
into question the adequacy of the mind– brain
identity model is the continued functioning of
the mind when the brain appears to be inactive
or impaired, such as may occur near death.
Dozens of case reports in the medical literature
spanning centuries have documented the phe-
nomenon of terminal lucidity, the unexplained
return of mental clarity and memory shortly
before death in patients who had suffered years
of chronic schizophrenia or dementia (Nahm &
Greyson, 2009). Beyond this paradoxical en-
hanced mental clarity while brain function pre-
sumably deteriorates, considerable research in
the past several decades has been published
delineating parameters of what have come to be
called near-death experiences (NDEs). These
profound subjective experiences that many peo-
ple report when they are near death pose chal-
lenges to the materialist mind– brain identity
model (Greyson, 2003; Parnia, Waller, Yeates,
& Fenwick, 2001; Schwartz, Stapp, & Beaure-
gard, 2005; van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, &
Elfferich, 2001).
Such experiences of altered consciousness on
the threshold of death have been described spo-
radically in the Western medical literature since
the 19th century (Brierre de Boismont, 1859;
Cullen, 1894), were identified as a discrete syn-
drome toward the end of that century (Heim,
1892), and have been studied more systemati-
cally in the past 30 years (Holden, Greyson, &
James, 2009). Recent research suggests that
NDEs are reported by 12% to 18% of cardiac
arrest survivors (Greyson, 2003; Parnia et al.,
2001; van Lommel et al., 2001), and that they
are more consistent with a normal response to
stress than with a pathological disorder (Grey-
son, 2000, 2001).
These NDEs are vivid experiences involving
mystical or transcendental features occurring to
people who have been physiologically close to
death, as in cardiac arrest or other life-
threatening conditions, although mystical and
transcendental experiences may of course occur
under other circumstances as well. Frequent
NDE features include feelings of peace and joy;
a sense of being out of one’s physical body and
watching events from an out-of-body perspec-
tive; a cessation of pain; seeing an unusually
bright light, sometimes experienced as a “Being
of Light” that radiates love and may speak or
otherwise communicate with the person; en-
countering other beings, often deceased people;
experiencing a revival of memories or even a
full life review; seeing some “other realm,”
often of great beauty; sensing a barrier or border
beyond which the person cannot go; and return-
ing to the physical body, often reluctantly.
A number of reductionistic hypotheses
have been proposed to explain NDEs, attrib-
uting them to psychopathology, personality
traits, altered blood gases, neurotoxic meta-
bolic reactions, or neuroanatomical malfunc-
tions, although such speculations generally
lack any empirical support and address only
selected aspects of the phenomena (Greyson,
Kelly, & Kelly, 2009). The most important
objection to the adequacy of all reductionistic
psychophysiological theories, however, is
that mental clarity, vivid sensory imagery, a
clear memory of the experience, and a convic-
tion that the experience seemed more real than
ordinary consciousness are the norm for NDEs,
even when they occur in conditions of drasti-
cally altered cerebral physiology under which
the reductionistic model would deem con-
sciousness impossible.
Extreme Physiology of Cardiac Arrest
and Anesthesia
Although experiences resembling NDEs may
occur in a wide variety of medical circum-
stances, NDEs are most reliably triggered when
patients are clinically near death, such as during
cardiac arrest or some other, usually sudden,
loss of vital functions. In one study of 1,595
consecutive admissions to a cardiac care unit,
NDEs were reported 10 times more often by
patients who had survived definite cardiac arrest
compared with patients with other serious car-
diac incidents (Greyson, 2003). The particular
challenge of NDEs to materialist reductionism
lies in one central feature that makes this phe-
nomenon uniquely important in any consider-
ation of the mind– brain problem: specifically,
the occurrence of vivid and complex mentation,
sensation, and memory formation under condi-
tions in which materialist models of the mind
deem them impossible. The stark incompatibil-
38 GREYSON
ity of NDEs with the current reductionistic
model of mind– brain relations is particularly
evident in connection with experiences that
occur under two conditions, namely, general
anesthesia and cardiac arrest.
General Anesthesia
In our collection at the University of Vir-
ginia, 22% of our NDE cases occurred under
anesthesia, and they include the same features
as other NDEs, such as out-of-body experiences
that involved watching medical personnel
working on their body, an unusually bright or
vivid light, meeting deceased persons, and, sig-
nificantly, thoughts, memories, and sensations
that were as clear or clearer than usual.
John et al. (2001) recently carried out a mas-
sive study intended specifically to identify reli-
able electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates
of loss and recovery of consciousness during
general anesthesia. Their results confirmed the
standard thinking about anesthesia and EEG,
namely, that unconsciousness is associated with
a pronounced shift toward lower frequencies in
the delta and low theta range, with a more
frontal distribution and higher power. More sig-
nificantly, John et al. showed that gamma-
type EEG rhythms lost power and became
decoupled across the brain when patients lost
consciousness, and that these changes were
reversed with return of consciousness. The
pattern reflects the complete disabling of the
brain under anesthesia.
Additional results supportive of this conclu-
sion derive from other recent functional imag-
ing studies that have looked at blood flow, glu-
cose metabolism, or other indicators of cerebral
activity under general anesthesia (Alkire, 1998;
Alkire, Haier, & Fallon, 2000; Shulman, Hyder,
& Rothman, 2003; White & Alkire, 2003). In
these studies, brain areas essential to the global
workspace are consistently deactivated individ-
ually and decoupled functionally. Auditory and
other stimuli are no longer able to ignite the
large-scale cooperative network interactions
that normally accompany conscious experience.
Cardiac Arrest
The situation is even more dramatic with
regard to NDEs occurring during cardiac arrest,
many of which in fact occur also in conjunction
with major surgical procedures involving gen-
eral anesthesia. There are numerous reports of
NDEs in connection with cardiac arrest, and,
like those that occur with general anesthesia,
they include the typical features associated with
NDEs, most notably vivid or even enhanced
sensation and mentation.
However, in cardiac arrest, cerebral function-
ing shuts down within a few seconds. Whether
the heart actually stops beating entirely or goes
into ventricular fibrillation, the result is essen-
tially instantaneous circulatory arrest, with
blood flow and oxygen uptake in the brain
plunging swiftly to near-zero levels. EEG signs
of cerebral ischemia, typically with global slow-
ing and loss of fast activity, are detectable
within 6 –10 s and progress to isoelectricity
(flat-line EEGs) within 10 –20 s of the onset of
arrest. In sum, full arrest leads rapidly to the
three major clinical signs of death (absence of
cardiac output, absence of respiration, and ab-
sence of brainstem reflexes) and provides the
best model we have of the dying process
(DeVries, Bakker, Visser, Diephuis, & van
Huffelin, 1998; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; van
Lommel et al., 2001; Vriens, Bakker, DeVries,
Wieneke, & van Huffelin, 1996). Nevertheless,
in four published studies alone, more than 100
cases of NDEs occurring under conditions of
cardiac arrest have been reported (Greyson,
2003; Parnia et al., 2001; Sabom, 1982; van
Lommel et al., 2001).
Those intent on defending materialist reduc-
tionism might object that even in the presence
of a flat-line EEG there still could be undetected
brain activity going on; current scalp-EEG tech-
nology detects only activity common to large
populations of neurons, mainly in the cerebral
cortex. However, the issue is not whether there
is brain activity of any kind whatsoever, but
whether there is brain activity of the specific
form agreed on by contemporary neuroscien-
tists as the necessary condition of conscious
experience. Activity of this form is eminently
detectable by current EEG technology, and it is
abolished either by adequate general anesthesia
or by cardiac arrest. In cardiac arrest, even
neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical
basis for coordination of neural activity be-
tween widely separated brain regions, are rap-
idly abolished. Moreover, cells in the hip-
pocampus, the region thought to be essential for
memory formation, are especially vulnerable to
39NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
the effects of anoxia (Vriens et al., 1996). In
short, it is not credible to suppose that NDEs
occurring under conditions of adequate general
anesthesia, let alone cardiac arrest, can be ac-
counted for in terms of some hypothetical re-
sidual capacity of the brain to process and store
complex information under those conditions.
A second defense of a materialist explanation
for NDEs is to suggest that these experiences do
not occur when they appear to occur, during the
actual episodes of brain insult, but at a different
time, perhaps just before or just after the insult,
when the brain is more or less functional. How-
ever, unconsciousness produced by cardiac ar-
rest characteristically leaves patients amnesic
and confused for events immediately preceding
and following these episodes (Aminoff, Schei-
nman, Griffin, & Herre, 1988; Parnia & Fen-
wick, 2002; van Lommel et al., 2001). In addi-
tion, the confusional experiences occurring as a
person is losing or regaining consciousness do
not have the life-transforming impact so char-
acteristic of NDEs. Second, a substantial num-
ber of NDEs contain apparent time “anchors” in
the form of verifiable reports of events occur-
ring during the period of insult itself. For ex-
ample, a cardiac-arrest victim described by van
Lommel et al. (2001) had been discovered lying
in a meadow 30 min or more prior to his arrival
at the emergency room, comatose and cyanotic,
and yet days later, having recovered, he was
able to describe accurately various circum-
stances occurring in conjunction with the ensu-
ing resuscitation procedures in the hospital.
NDE Features Problematic for Materialist
Reductionism
Most near-death experiencers are convinced
that during the NDE they temporarily separated
from their physical bodies. In our collection, for
example, 81% of experiencers reported feeling
separated from the body during the NDE. The
idea that mind and brain are not identical is not
inherently unscientific. Although it contradicts
the assumption of materialistic reductionism
that the mind can be reduced to physical enti-
ties, the direction that physics has taken in the
last century justifies ample caution when it
comes to making assumptions about the scope
and the fundamental character of the natural
world. Although most psychologists and neuro-
scientists accept the reductionistic model that
brain produces mind, or indeed is the mind,
several features of NDEs call into question
whether materialist reductionism will ever pro-
vide a full explanation of them.
Enhanced Mentation During Cerebral
Impairment
Perhaps the most important of these features,
because it is so commonly reported in NDEs, is
the occurrence of normal or even enhanced
mental activity at times when, according to the
mind– brain identity model, such activity should
be diminishing, if not impossible. Individuals
reporting NDEs often describe their mental pro-
cesses during the NDE as remarkably clear and
lucid and their sensory experiences as unusually
vivid, equaling or even surpassing those of their
normal waking state. Reports of NDEs from
widely divergent cultures confirm that people
have consistently reported, from different parts
of the world and across different periods of
history, having had complicated cognitive and
perceptual experiences at times when brain
functioning was severely impaired.
A recent analysis of several hundred NDE
cases showed that 80% of experiencers de-
scribed their thinking during the NDE as
“clearer than usual” (45%) or “as clear as usual”
(35%). In addition, 74% described their think-
ing as “faster than usual” (37%) or “at the usual
speed” (37%); 65% described their thinking as
“more logical than usual” (29%) or “as logical
as usual” (36%); and 55% described their con-
trol over their thoughts as “more control than
usual” (19%) or “as much control as usual”
(36%; Kelly, Greyson, & Kelly, 2007, p. 386).
An analysis of NDEs with contemporaneous
medical records showed that, in fact, people
reported enhanced mental functioning signifi-
cantly more often when they were actually
physiologically close to death than when they
were not (Owens, Cook, & Stevenson, 1990).
Another example of enhanced mental func-
tioning during an NDE is a rapid revival of
memories that sometimes extends over the per-
son’s entire life. An analysis of several hundred
NDE cases showed that in 24% of them there
was a report of some degree of revival of mem-
ories during the NDE. Moreover, in contrast to
the isolated and often just single brief memories
evoked during cortical stimulation, memories
revived during an NDE are frequently described
40 GREYSON
as being “many” or even as an almost instanta-
neous “panoramic” review of the person’s entire
life: 57% of those reporting memories said that
they had experienced many memories of a re-
view of their entire life, whereas only 43%
reported one or a few memories (Kelly et al.,
2007, p. 386). In addition, an analysis of 68
published life review cases found that in 71%
the experience had involved memories of many
events of the person’s whole life (Stevenson &
Cook, 1995, p. 455).
Accurate Perception From an Out-of-Body
Perspective
Another important feature of NDEs that ma-
terialist reductionism cannot adequately ac-
count for is the experience of being out of the
body and perceiving events that one could not
ordinarily have perceived. A recent analysis of
several hundred cases showed that 48% of near-
death experiencers reported seeing their physi-
cal bodies from a different visual perspective.
Many of them also reported witnessing events
going on in the vicinity of their body, such as
the attempts of medical personnel to resuscitate
them at the scene of an accident or in an emer-
gency room (Kelly et al., 2007). A materialist
reductionism could attribute the belief that one
has witnessed events going on around one’s
body to a retrospective imaginative reconstruc-
tion attributable to a persisting ability to hear,
even when unconscious, or to the memory of
objects or events that one might have glimpsed
just before losing consciousness or while re-
gaining consciousness, or to expectations about
what was likely to have occurred (Blackmore,
1993; Saavedra-Aguilar & Go´mez-Jeria, 1989;
Woerlee, 2004).
Such explanations are inadequate, however,
for several reasons. First, memory of events
occurring just before or after loss of conscious-
ness is usually confused or completely absent
(Aminoff et al., 1988; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002;
van Lommel et al., 2001). Second, claims that
adequately anesthetized patients retain any sig-
nificant capacity to be aware of or respond to
their environment in more than rudimentary
ways—let alone to hear and understand— have
in general not been substantiated. The phenom-
enology of such awakenings in anesthesia is
altogether different from that of NDEs, and
often extremely unpleasant, frightening, and
even painful (Osterman, Hopper, Heran, Keane,
& van der Kolk, 2001; Spitellie, Holmes, &
Domino, 2002). The experiences are typically
brief and fragmentary, and primarily auditory or
tactile, and not visual; for example, the patient
may report hearing noises or snippets of speech,
or briefly feeling sensations associated with in-
tubation or with specific surgical procedures.
There have been occasional reports of pa-
tients who appeared to display some degree of
memory for events that occurred during surgery
(Cheek, 1964, 1966), but there were numerous
methodological problems with studies purport-
ing to show this (Trustman, Dubovsky, & Tit-
ley, 1977), and more recent and better con-
trolled studies have not substantiated such
claims (Ghoneim & Block, 1992, 1997). There
is no convincing evidence for adequately anes-
thetized patients having any explicit, or con-
scious, memory of events during the surgery
(apart from patients who have reported such
memories in connection with an NDE). It is not
plausible that memories of complex sensory
experiences occurring during general anesthesia
could have been acquired by the impaired brain
itself during the period of unconsciousness. Fur-
thermore, any such explanatory claims are even
less credible when, as commonly happens, the
specific sensory channels involved in the re-
ported experience have been blocked as part of
the surgical routine—for example, when visual
experiences are reported by patients whose eyes
were taped shut during the relevant period of
time.
Sabom (1982) carried out a study specifically
to examine whether claims of out-of-body per-
ceptions could be attributed to retrospective
reconstruction. He interviewed patients who re-
ported NDEs in which they seemed to be watch-
ing what was going on around their body, most
of them cardiac patients who were undergoing
cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the time of
their NDE. He also interviewed “seasoned car-
diac patients” who had not had an NDE during
their cardiac-related crises, and asked them to
describe a cardiac resuscitation procedure as if
they were watching from a third-person per-
spective. He found that 80% of the comparison
patients made at least one major error in their
descriptions, whereas none of the NDE patients
made any. Moreover, 19% of the NDE patients
related accurate details of specific idiosyncratic
or unexpected events during their resuscitation
41NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
(pp. 87–115). Sartori (2008) recently replicated
Sabom’s findings in a 5-year study of hospital-
ized intensive care patients, in which patients
who reported leaving their bodies during car-
diac arrests described their resuscitations accu-
rately, whereas every cardiac arrest survivor
who had not reported leaving the body de-
scribed incorrect equipment and procedures
when asked to describe their resuscitation.
An even more difficult challenge to material-
istic models of NDEs comes from cases in
which experiencers report that, while out of the
body, they became aware of events occurring at
a distance or that in some other way would have
been beyond the reach of their ordinary senses
even if they had been fully and normally con-
scious. Clark (1984) and Owens (1995) each
published a case of this type, and we have
reported on 15 cases, including seven cases
previously published by others and eight from
our own collection (Cook, Greyson, & Steven-
son, 1998; Kelly, Greyson, & Stevenson, 2000),
again including accurate perceptions of unex-
pected or unlikely details. In addition, Ring and
Cooper (1997, 1999) reported 31 cases of blind
individuals, nearly half of them blind from
birth, who experienced during their NDEs qua-
si-visual and sometimes veridical perceptions of
objects and events.
One criticism of these reports of perceptions
of events at a distance from the body is that they
often depend on the experiencer’s testimony
alone. However, some cases have been corrob-
orated by independent witnesses (Clark, 1984;
Hart, 1954; Ring & Lawrence, 1993). van Lom-
mel et al. (2001, p. 2041), for example, reported
a case in which a cardiac arrest victim was
brought into the hospital comatose and cyanotic
and remained in a coma and on artificial respi-
ration in the intensive care unit for more than a
week. When he regained consciousness, he im-
mediately recognized one of the nurses as the
person who had removed his dentures during
the resuscitation procedures, and he described
“correctly and in detail” the emergency room
and the procedure, including the cart in which
the nurse had put his dentures. The nurse cor-
roborated his account. Cook et al. (1998, pp.
399 400) reported a case in which the patient
described leaving his body and watching the
cardiac surgeon “flapping his arms as if trying
to fly.” The surgeon verified this detail by ex-
plaining that, in order to keep his scrubbed
hands from possibly becoming contaminated
before beginning surgery, he had developed the
idiosyncratic habit of flattening his hands
against his chest, while rapidly giving instruc-
tions by pointing with his elbows.
In a recent review of 93 reports of potentially
verifiable out-of-body perceptions during
NDEs, Holden (2009) found that 43% had been
corroborated to the investigator by an indepen-
dent informant, an additional 43% had been
reported by the experiencer to have been cor-
roborated by an independent informant who
was no longer available to be interviewed by the
investigator, and only 14% relied solely on the
experiencer’s report. Of these out-of-body per-
ceptions, 92% were completely accurate, 6%
contained some error, and only 1% was com-
pletely erroneous. Even among those cases cor-
roborated to the investigator by an independent
informant, 88% were completely accurate, 10%
contained some error, and 3% were completely
erroneous. The cumulative weight of these
cases is inconsistent with the conception that
purported out-of-body perceptions are nothing
more than hallucinations.
Visions of Deceased Acquaintances
Many people who approach death and re-
cover report that, during the time they seemed
to be dying, they met deceased relatives and
friends. In a recent analysis of several hundred
NDEs, 42% of experiencers reported meeting
one or more recognizable deceased acquaintan-
ces during the NDE. Such experiences have
been widely viewed as being hallucinations,
caused by drugs or other physiological condi-
tions or by the person’s expectations or wishes
to be reunited with deceased loved ones at the
time of death. However, a closer examination
of these experiences indicates that such expla-
nations are not adequate (Kelly, 2001).
People close to death are more likely to per-
ceive deceased persons than do people who are
not close to death: The latter, when they have
waking hallucinations, are more likely to report
seeing living persons (Osis & Haraldsson,
1977). Near-death experiencers whose medical
records show that they really were close to
death also were more likely to perceive de-
ceased persons than experiencers who were ill
but not close to death, even though many of the
latter thought they were dying (Kelly, 2001).
42 GREYSON
Moreover, numerous people near death also
perceive figures other than known deceased per-
sons during the NDE, most of these being un-
recognized. If expectation alone were driving
the process, people would presumably recog-
nize the hallucinatory figures, either as actual
deceased or living people or as known religious
figures, more often than was in fact the case.
People more often perceive deceased people
with whom they were emotionally close, but in
one third of the cases, the deceased person was
either someone with whom the experiencer had
a distant or even poor relationship or someone
whom the experiencer had never met, such as a
relative who died long before the experiencer’s
birth (Kelly, 2001). van Lommel (2004, p. 122)
reported the case of a man who had an NDE
during cardiac arrest in which he saw his de-
ceased grandmother and an unknown man.
Later shown a picture of his biological father,
whom he had never known and who had died
years ago, he immediately recognized him as
the man he had seen in his NDE.
There is one particular kind of vision of the
deceased that calls into question even more
directly their dismissal as subjective hallucina-
tions: cases in which the dying person appar-
ently sees, and often expresses surprise at see-
ing, a person whom he or she thought was
living, but who had in fact recently died. Re-
ports of such cases were published in the 19th
century and have continued to be reported in
recent years (Greyson, in press). Because in
these cases the experiencers had no knowledge
of the death of the recently deceased person, the
vision cannot plausibly be attributed to the ex-
periencer’s expectations.
Conclusion
In sum, the challenge of NDEs to materialist
reductionism lies in asking how complex con-
sciousness, including mentation, sensory per-
ception, and memory, can occur under condi-
tions in which current physiological models of
mind deem it impossible. This conflict between
a materialist model of brain–mind identity and
the occurrence of NDEs under conditions of
general anesthesia or cardiac arrest is profound
and inescapable. Only when we expand models
of mind to accommodate extraordinary experi-
ences such as NDEs will we progress in our
understanding of consciousness and its relation
to brain. The predominant contemporary mod-
els of consciousness are based on principles of
classical physics that were shown to be incom-
plete in the early decades of the 20th century.
However, the development of postclassical
physics over the past century offers empirical
support for a new scientific conceptualization of
the interface between mind and brain (Schwartz
et al., 2005).
References
Alkire, M. T. (1998). Quantitative EEG correlations
with brain glucose metabolic rate during anesthe-
sia in volunteers. Anesthesiology, 89, 323–333.
Alkire, M. T., Haier, R. J., & Fallon, J. H. (2000).
Toward a unified theory of narcosis. Conscious-
ness and Cognition, 9, 370 –386.
Aminoff, M. J., Scheinman, M. M., Griffin, J. C., &
Herre, J. M. (1988). Electrocerebral accompani-
ments of syncope associated with malignant ven-
tricular arrhythmias. Annals of Internal Medicine,
108, 791–796.
Blackmore, S. (1993). Dying to live. Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus.
Brierre de Boismont, A. (1859). On hallucinations
(R. T. Hulme, trans.). London: Henry Renshaw.
Cheek, D. B. (1964). Surgical memory and reaction
to careless conversation. American Journal of
Clinical Hypnosis, 6, 237–239.
Cheek, D. B. (1966). The meaning of continued
hearing sense under general chemo-anesthesia.
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 8, 275–
280.
Clark, K. (1984). Clinical interventions with near-
death experiencers. In B. Greyson & C. P. Flynn
(Eds.), The near-death experience (pp. 242–255).
Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Cook, E. W., Greyson, B., & Stevenson, I. (1998).
Do any near-death experiences provide evidence
for the survival of human personality after death?
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 12, 377– 406.
Cullen, W. L. (1894). What drowning feels like.
British Medical Journal, 2, 941–944.
DeVries, J. W., Bakker, P. F. A., Visser, G. H.,
Diephuis, J. C., & van Huffelin, A. C. (1998).
Changes in cerebral oxygen uptake and cerebral
electrical activity during defibrillation threshold
testing. Anesthesia & Analgesia, 87, 16 –20.
Ghoneim, M. M., & Block, R. I. (1992). Learning
and consciousness during general anesthesia. An-
esthesiology, 76, 279 –305.
Ghoneim, M. M., & Block, R. I. (1997). Learning
and memory during general anesthesia. Anesthesi-
ology, 87, 378 – 410.
Greyson, B. (2000). Dissociation in people who have
near-death experiences. Lancet, 355, 460 – 463.
43NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
Greyson, B. (2001). Posttraumatic stress symptoms
following near-death experiences. American Jour-
nal of Orthopsychiatry, 71, 368 –373.
Greyson, B. (2003). Incidence and correlates of near-
death experiences in a cardiac care unit. General
Hospital Psychiatry, 25, 269 –276.
Greyson, B. (in press). Seeing deceased persons
not known to have died: “Peak in Darien” expe-
riences. Anthropology and Humanism.
Greyson, B., Kelly, E. W., & Kelly, E. F. (2009).
Explanatory models for near-death experiences. In
J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The
handbook of near-death experiences (pp. 213–
234). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.
Hart, H. (1954). ESP projection. Journal of the Amer-
ican Society for Psychical Research, 48, 121–146.
Heim, A. (1892). Notizen u¨ ber den Tod absturz [Re-
marks on fatal falls]. Jahrbuch des Schweitzerischen
Alpenclub [Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club], 27,
327–337.
Holden, J. M. (2009). Veridical perception in near-
death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, &
D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death ex-
periences (pp. 185–211). Santa Barbara, CA: Prae-
ger/ABC-CLIO.
Holden, J. M., Greyson, B., & James, D. (Eds.).
(2009). The handbook of near-death experiences.
Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.
John, E. R., Prichep, L. S., Kox, W., Valde´ s-Sosa, P.,
Bosch-Bayard, J., Aubert, E., . . . Gugino, L. D.
(2001). Invariant reversible QEEG effects of anes-
thetics. Consciousness and Cognition, 10, 165–
183.
Kelly, E. W. (2001). Near-death experiences with
reports of meeting deceased people. Death Stud-
ies, 25, 229 –249.
Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2007).
Unusual experiences near death and related phe-
nomena. In E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree,
A. Gauld, M. Grosso, & B. Greyson, Irreducible
mind (pp. 367– 421). Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Stevenson, I. (2000).
Can experiences near death furnish evidence of life
after death? Omega, 40, 513–519.
Nahm, N., & Greyson, B. (2009). Terminal lucidity
in mental disorders. Journal of Nervous and Men-
tal Disease, 197, 942–944.
Osis, K., & Haraldsson, E. (1977). At the hour of
death. New York: Avon.
Osterman, J. E., Hopper, J., Heran, W. J., Keane,
T. M., & van der Kolk, B. A. (2001). Awareness
under anesthesia and the development of posttrau-
matic stress disorder. General Hospital Psychia-
try, 23, 198 –204.
Owens, J. E. (1995). Paranormal reports from a study
of near-death experience and a case of an unusual
near-death vision. In L. Coly & J. D. S. McMahon
(Eds.), Parapsychology and thanatology (pp. 149 –
167). New York: Parapsychology Foundation.
Owens, J. E., Cook, E. W., & Stevenson, I. (1990).
Features of “near-death experience” in relation to
whether or not patients were near death. Lancet,
336, 1175–1177.
Parnia, S., & Fenwick, P. (2002). Near death expe-
riences in cardiac arrest. Resuscitation, 52, 5–11.
Parnia, S., Waller, D. G., Yeates, R., & Fenwick, P.
(2001). A qualitative and quantitative study of the
incidence, features and aetiology of near death
experiences in cardiac arrest survivors. Resuscita-
tion, 48, 149 –156.
Ring, K., & Cooper, S. (1997). Near-death and out-
of-body experiences in the blind: A study of ap-
parent eyeless vision. Journal of Near-Death Stud-
ies, 16, 101–147.
Ring, K., & Cooper, S. (1999). Mindsight: Near-
death and out-of-body experiences in the blind.
Palo Alto, CA: William James Center/Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology.
Ring, K., & Lawrence, M. (1993). Further evidence for
veridical perception during near-death experiences.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11, 223–229.
Saavedra-Aguilar, J. C., & Go´ mez-Jeria, J. S. (1989).
A neurobiological model for near-death experi-
ences. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 7, 205–222.
Sabom, M. B. (1982). Recollections of death. New
York: Harper & Row.
Sartori, P. (2008). The near-death experiences of
hospitalized intensive care patients: A five year
clinical study. Lewiston, England: Edward Mellen
Press.
Schwartz, J. M., Stapp, H. P., & Beauregard, M.
(2005). Quantum physics in neuroscience and psy-
chology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences,
360, 1309 –1327.
Shulman, R. G., Hyder, F., & Rothman, D. L. (2003).
Cerebral metabolism and consciousness. Comptes
Rendus Biologies, 326, 253–273.
Spitellie, P. H., Holmes, M. A., & Domino, K. B.
(2002). Awareness under anesthesia. Anesthesiol-
ogy Clinics of North America, 20, 555–570.
Stevenson, I., & Cook, E. W. (1995). Involuntary
memories during severe physical illness or injury.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 183, 452–
458.
Trustman, R., Dubovsky, S., & Titley, R. (1977).
Auditory perception during general anesthesia. In-
ternational Journal of Clinical and Experimental
Hypnosis, 25, 88 –105.
van Lommel, P. (2004). About the continuity of our
consciousness. Advances in Experimental Medi-
cine and Biology, 550, 115–132.
van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., & Elf-
ferich, I. (2001). Near-death experience in survi-
vors of cardiac arrest. Lancet, 358, 2039 –2045.
44 GREYSON
Vriens, E. M., Bakker, P. F. A., DeVries, J. W.,
Wieneke, G. H., & van Huffelin, A. C. (1996).
The impact of repeated short episodes of circu-
latory arrest on cerebral function. Electroen-
cephalography and Clinical Neurophysiol-
ogy, 98, 236 –242.
Watson, J. B. (1914). Behavior. New York: Holt.
White, N. S., & Alkire, M. T. (2003). Impaired
thalamocortical connectivity in humans during
general-anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. Neu-
roImage, 19, 402– 411.
Woerlee, G. M. (2004). Cardiac arrest and near-death
experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 22,
235–249.
Received July 1, 2009
Revision received December 8, 2009
Accepted December 8, 2009
45NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
... We cannot analyse here the syncretistic nature of the chapel holidays and the rituals performed there, i.e. the interweaving of canonical Orthodoxy and animistic-magical beliefs (see more on this in Heikkinen 2006;Vinokurova 2007;2010;. In any case, chapel feasts have had an important place in the identity of the community throughout history. ...
... So, in the case of an NDE, when brain activity has temporarily stopped, some other way of consciousness should function, the human consciousness should be located 'somewhere else', outside the physical organism handled by conventional medicine. Understandably, this is a challenge to the classical understanding of human consciousness and its location (see also Greyson 2010). As could be understood, G's illness was caused by some kind of blood poisoning, the source of which we could not find. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article* focuses on the immediate near-death experience of an elderly woman living in traditional Vepsian culture. We analyse which universal, and which more culturally motivated features are present in her story narrated to us in 2018. We conclude that, despite the strong association with animistic beliefs in the informant’s everyday life, the experience is dominated by elements specific to vernacular Orthodox Christianity. The article presents a translation from Vepsian of a fragmentary personal experience narrative.
Article
Full-text available
This work explores the epistemology of consciousness in Mocombe's consciousness field in the material world. The paper critically assesses Mocombe's consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness in the universe. The work goes on to highlight the manifestation of Mocombe's consciousness field from the absolute vacuum to and in the material resource framework that is the earth, and how we come to know about and experience both (the absolute vacuum and the material worlds that it creates).
Article
This work explores the axiology of consciousness in Mocombes consciousness field in the material world. The paper critically assesses Mocombes consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness in the universe.
Article
Full-text available
This work outlines the constitution and tenets of Mocombe's philosophy of science as emanating from his theories of phenomenological structuralism and consciousness field theory. Against postmodern approaches to the philosophy of science, Mocombe offers a foundational-coherent model for understanding the philosophy of science and research methods in his theories.
Article
Les expériences de mort imminente (EMI) sont maintenant étudiées en clinique en tant qu’expériences exceptionnelles. Elles font l’objet de recherches pluridisciplinaires depuis de nombreuses années, ce qui permet d’appréhender le rapport à la mort sous des angles nouveaux et d’observer les processus de changement à la suite de telles expériences. Dans cet article, nous regroupons selon quatre dimensions les explications fournies par les chercheurs au sujet des EMI, pour ensuite nous intéresser au lien entre EMI et spiritualité. Nous présentons l’EMI comme une forme de manifestation du sacré, une hiérophanie au sens proposé par Mircea Eliade.
Article
Full-text available
This work explores the axiology of consciousness in Mocombe's consciousness field in the material world. The paper critically assesses Mocombe's consciousness field theory (CFT) within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness in the universe. The work goes on to highlight the manifestation of Mocombe's consciousness field in the material resource framework that is the earth, and the nature and origins of ethics and values.
Article
Full-text available
This work explores the ontology of Mocombe’s consciousness field in the material world. The paper critically assesses Mocombe’s consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness in the universe. The work goes on to highlight the manifestation of Mocombe’s consciousness field in the material resource framework that is the earth. In other words, the article explores how consciousness as a material force exists in the material universe and gets exercised as human practical consciousness.
Article
Full-text available
This work explores the phenomenological structural basis of Mocombe's consciousness field theory. The paper critically assesses Mocombe's consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness in the universe. The work goes on to highlight how human consciousness and society are constituted from Mocombe's consciousness field to societal social structure, which Mocombe calls social class language game.
Article
Full-text available
Persons who report “near-death experiences” (NDEs) acknowledge more intrusive symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those who came close to death without NDEs, but not more avoidance symptoms, suggesting a nonspecific stress response. Although dissociation generally increases vulnerability to PTSD, the positive affect that distinguishes NDEs from other dissociative experiences may mitigate subsequent PTSD symptoms.
Article
Full-text available
One of the main reasons that near-death experiences have gener- ated so much interest in recent years among the general public is because they seem to provide evidence that consciousness survives the death of the physical body. It is puzzling, therefore, that most researchers - both those interested in NDEs and those interested in survival research - have neglect- ed to address the question of whether NDEs do provide evidence for survival. We describe three features of NDEs - enhanced mentation, the experience of seeing the physical body from a different position in space, and paranor- mal perceptions - that we believe might provide convergent evidence sup- porting the survival hypothesis. We then describe 7 published cases and 7 cases from our own collection that contain all three features. These cases are all - with one possible exception - somewhat deficient with regard to their recording and investigation, but they exemplify the type of case that should be identified earlier and investigated more thoroughly than these have been, and that may then help us decide the extent to which NDEs can contribute to the evidence for survival of consciousness after death.
Article
Full-text available
Most people who have a near-death experience (NDE) say that the experience convinced them that they will survive death. People who have not had such an experience, however, may not share this conviction. Although all features of NDEs, when looked at alone, might be explained in ways other than survival, there are three features in particular that we believe suggest the possibility of survival, especially when they all occur in the same experience. These features are: enhanced mental processes at a time when physiological functioning is seriously impaired; the experience of being out of the body and viewing events going on around it as from a position above; and the awareness of remote events not accessible to the person's ordinary senses. We briefly report one such case, and we also briefly describe two additional such cases in which the remote events apparently seen were verified by other persons.
Chapter
Near-death experiences (NDEs), profound events reported by people who have been close to death, often include feelings of peace, a sense of being outside the physical body, a life review, and meeting apparent nonphysical beings and environments; and they often precipitate profound changes in attitudes and values. Research on NDEs has focused on their epidemiology, psychophysiological correlates, and aftereffects, most commonly including increased spirituality, compassion, altruism, appreciation of life, and belief in postmortem existence. NDEs challenge the conventional assumption that consciousness is invariably linked to brain processes. Scientific discussions of the mind-brain problem must take these data into account.
Article
Few scientists have taken seriously the interpretation of near-death experiences (NDEs) as evidence for survival after death, even though most people having such an experience have become convinced that they will survive death and several features of NDEs are at least suggestive of survival. This article compares survival and some nonsurvival interpretations of NDEs in light of one feature suggestive of survival, that of reports of having seen deceased persons during the NDE. Several features of 74 NDEs involving such reports were compared with those of 200 NDEs not involving such reports. Although some of the findings could support either a survival or a nonsurvival interpretation, several other findings may weaken the Primary nonsurvival hypothesis, that of expectation. Additionally, the convergence of several features suggesting survival and the convergence of features that require multiple kinds of alternative explanations, in individual cases as well as in large groups of cases, warrant our considering the survival hypothesis of NDEs more seriously than most scientists currently do.