Are Near-Death Episodes Evidence of the Afterlife?

Reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) have increased significantly in recent decades, coinciding with advances in medical science that enable physicians to revive some patients who appear clinically dead.

In a typical hospital NDE, a gravely ill or seriously injured person—unconscious and unresponsive—is said to undergo a paranormal experience while in bed or on an operating table or gurney. Sensors monitoring the person’s brain and heart activity may indicate that he or she is dead. The patient then revives—to the surprise of his or her medical team—and describes the transcendental experience.

NDEs can occur in settings other than a hospital, including a supermarket aisle, a theater, a construction site, the scene of a car accident, or anywhere else where a person may suffer a life-threatening event such as a heart attack, stroke, or severe injury.

Those who report NDEs often say they perceived themselves as disembodied entities (or souls) that could “float” around a room, through a wall, into a hallway, or into the spirit world. In hospitals, some NDE patients have reported that they witnessed their own operation while their separated soul hovered above their body, or that they ventured through a tunnel into heaven, where they encountered deceased relatives and intense love beyond description. Often they reported that their NDE surroundings seemed more real to them than their earthly environs.

It is possible, of course, that some people fabricate NDEs to attract attention to themselves. It is also possible that a reported NDE is really a hallucination, a trance, or a lucid dream, in which a sleeper is aware that he or she is having a dream and can manipulate its action and outcome.

Physicians, neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, theologians, and philosophers who study reports of possible NDEs require proof before declaring one as a genuine NDE. If, for example, an unconscious surgery patient with no detectable brain function revives and describes in accurate detail the techniques and conversation of those operating on him or her—or even the vegetables on the plate of a physician at lunch in the hospital cafeteria—analysts would be inclined to recommend the patient’s report for further study.

There can be no gainsaying, though, that NDEs occur frequently. The International Association for Near-Death Studies estimates that ten to twenty percent of the world population has had or will have an NDE.

Reports of NDEs date back to ancient times. In one of the most famous accounts of them, the Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 425-348 BC) wrote in The Republic of a soldier named Er who fell in battle but awakened days later at his funeral. Er said that while “dead” he journeyed into the spirit world. There, he learned that the upright receive a heavenly reward but the wicked receive punishment.

Over the centuries, there have been many other reports fitting the description of an NDE. But the subject did not gain popular attention until after psychiatrists Elisabeth Kubler Ross and Raymond Moody published books on the subject, Ross in 1969 and Moody in 1975. Thereafter, interest in the subject intensified. Bruce Greyson, MD, began tracking NDEs at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Today, Greyson has files on more than a thousand patients, many of whom experienced NDEs that he says “cannot be dismissed as dream states or hallucinations” (“Near-Death Experiences").

Fr. Robert Spitzer, a Jesuit priest with three master’s degrees and a PhD, spoke in a YouTube video of cases in which persons blind from birth experienced NDE episodes. Kenneth Ring, PhD, and Sharon Cooper, MA, of the University of Connecticut, also reported on NDEs of the blind in an article published by the University of North Texas.

After reviving, the blind persons described specific details of sights in NDEs—such as colors, light, shapes, etc.—a seeming impossibility for people who never saw anything in the physical world, Spitzer, Ring, and Cooper said. Spitzer believes that well-documented NDEs are evidence that a human being has a soul that continues to exist after the brain ceases to function. It is the soul, operating independently of the brain, that perceives otherwordly phenomena, he believes.

The Catholic church has taken no official position on NDEs as supernatural phenomena. Endorsing even one would lay the church open to criticism and even mockery if analysts later proved the NDE to be a fraud or the result of a purely physical process. Nevertheless, the Vatican acknowledges that many NDEs are impressive in the evidence they yield. Individual Catholics are free to form their own opinions on the subject.

As to the question posed by the headline of this article, yes, NDEs are evidence of the afterlife—in some cases, strong evidence. But they are not yet proof of an afterlife.

Source

“Near-Death Experiences.” University of Virginia School of Medicine, Division of Perceptual Studies, 2026. <https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/near-death-experiences-ndes/>