Chapter 2

What Is a Near-Death Experience?

Definitions, Core Features, and a Brief History of NDE Research

Imagine that your heart stops beating. The monitors in the hospital room flatline. The medical team rushes in and begins chest compressions. You are, by every clinical measurement, dead. And yet — at the very moment the machines say you have ceased to exist — something extraordinary happens. You find yourself floating above your own body, watching the doctors work below. You feel a peace deeper than anything you have ever known. You move through a passage toward a brilliant, warm light. You are met by loved ones who died years ago, looking healthy, radiant, and overjoyed to see you. A being of overwhelming love communicates with you — not in words, but in a way that bypasses language altogether. You understand things you never understood before. And then, just as suddenly, you are pulled back into your body. The monitors beep again. The doctors exhale with relief. And you are left with a memory so vivid, so real, so life-changing that it never fades — not in a week, not in a decade, not in fifty years.

That, in broad strokes, is what millions of people around the world describe when they talk about a near-death experience — or NDE. The term might sound dramatic, even sensational. But as we will see in this chapter, NDEs are not tabloid fodder or fringe speculation. They are a well-documented, rigorously studied phenomenon that has been investigated by medical doctors, psychiatrists, cardiologists, and neuroscientists for more than fifty years. The research has been published in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the world, including The Lancet, Resuscitation, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. And the findings are remarkable.

In this chapter, we are going to do something simple but essential: we are going to define our terms. Before we can evaluate whether NDEs are evidence for the soul, before we can ask whether they are compatible with Christianity, before we can assess the skeptics' objections or the theologians' concerns — we need to know exactly what we are talking about. What is a near-death experience? How is it defined? How is it measured? What are its common features? How does it differ from a dream, a hallucination, or a drug trip? And where did the scientific study of NDEs come from in the first place?

These are foundational questions. If we get them right, everything that follows in this book will rest on solid ground.

Defining the Near-Death Experience

The term "near-death experience" was coined in 1975 by Dr. Raymond Moody, a philosopher and physician who had been collecting reports of unusual experiences from people who had come close to death or been resuscitated after clinical death.¹ Before Moody gave the phenomenon a name, people who had these experiences often kept them secret — afraid of being dismissed as crazy, or simply unable to find words adequate to describe what had happened to them. Moody's bestselling book Life After Life changed that. It gave people a vocabulary for something that had been happening throughout human history but had rarely been discussed openly.

But what exactly is a near-death experience? The answer depends on who you ask, because researchers have defined the term in slightly different ways over the years. Let me walk through the three most important definitions.

Moody's Original Descriptive Definition

Raymond Moody did not start with a rigid clinical definition. Instead, he interviewed hundreds of people who had nearly died and noticed that their accounts shared a striking set of common features. He described the "ideal" or "complete" NDE as a composite of these recurring elements: the person hears a buzzing or ringing sound, moves rapidly through a dark tunnel, finds himself outside his physical body, watches the resuscitation from above, meets deceased relatives, encounters a brilliant being of light radiating love and knowledge, experiences a panoramic life review, reaches some kind of border or limit, and is told (or decides) to return to his body.² Not every person reported every element, but the overall pattern was remarkably consistent across different people, different medical conditions, and different cultural backgrounds.

Moody's definition was descriptive rather than clinical. He was painting a picture of the phenomenon, not drawing a sharp boundary line. This was both a strength and a weakness. It was a strength because it captured the richness and depth of what people actually experienced. It was a weakness because it left researchers without a precise, measurable standard for deciding whether any given experience qualified as a "real" NDE. Was a person who simply felt peace during a medical crisis an NDEr? What about someone who saw a light but nothing else? The field needed something more rigorous.

The Medical Definition

As medical researchers began studying NDEs in hospital settings, a more clinical definition emerged. In its simplest form, a near-death experience is a profound subjective experience with transcendental or mystical elements that occurs during a close brush with death or during actual clinical death. The key components are: (1) the person must be genuinely near death — their body is in a life-threatening crisis, and in many cases they are clinically dead, meaning their heart has stopped and they show no measurable brain activity; and (2) during that crisis, they have an experience — not just unconsciousness, but a vivid, structured, coherent set of perceptions that the person remembers clearly afterward.³

Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist and founder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), put it plainly in his research. As the term "near-death experience" suggests, there are two components: being near death and having an experience at that time. In Long's research, NDEs are considered to have happened only when individuals were truly, physically near death — literally at death's door. They are so physically compromised from an accident or illness that they are generally unconscious and may be clinically dead, with no heartbeat or breathing. And during this time of unconsciousness, they have the experience part of the NDE.⁴

This medical definition is important because it distinguishes NDEs from other kinds of unusual experiences. Not every spiritual vision is an NDE. Not every mystical moment during illness qualifies. The person must have been genuinely close to dying — and ideally, the medical records should confirm this.

The Greyson NDE Scale: A Standardized Measurement Tool

The most significant step toward scientific rigor came in 1983, when Dr. Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, published the NDE Scale — a standardized questionnaire designed to measure near-death experiences in a consistent, quantifiable way.⁵ Greyson is one of the most respected NDE researchers in the world, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications on the topic spanning more than four decades. His scale remains the gold standard in the field to this day.

Why does a standardized scale matter so much? Because without one, researchers are left making subjective judgments about whether someone's experience "counts" as an NDE. One researcher might include a report where a person simply felt peaceful during surgery, while another might exclude it. The Greyson Scale solved this problem by giving every researcher the same measuring stick. If a person scores 7 or above, they had an NDE. If they score below 7, they did not — at least not by the rigorous standard the field has adopted. This allows researchers to compare findings across different studies, different hospitals, and different countries with confidence that they are all talking about the same phenomenon.⁶

In Long's NDERF research, every NDE included in his studies scored 7 or above on the Greyson Scale — further validating that these were genuine, well-defined near-death experiences rather than vague or ambiguous reports.⁷ Michael Sabom, the cardiologist who conducted the Atlanta Study (which we will discuss later in this chapter), likewise used the Greyson Scale to ensure that only experiences meeting the established threshold were included in his data. In his study of 160 patients, the 47 who reported NDEs had a mean score of approximately 13 on the Greyson Scale — well above the threshold.⁸

What an NDE Is Not: Distinguishing NDEs from Related Phenomena

One of the most common mistakes people make when they first encounter the NDE literature is to lump NDEs together with other kinds of unusual experiences. "Oh, that's just a hallucination," someone might say. Or, "Isn't that like a dream?" Or, "People on drugs see stuff like that all the time." These reactions are understandable but uninformed. NDEs are a distinct phenomenon, and getting clear on what they are not is just as important as understanding what they are.

NDEs Are Not Dreams

Dreams are a normal part of sleep. They occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the brain is active in specific, well-understood patterns. Dreams are often fragmented, illogical, and difficult to remember after waking. They fade quickly. Their content is typically jumbled — you might be in your childhood home one moment and on Mars the next, with no sense that anything is strange.

NDEs are the opposite of this in almost every respect. They occur not during sleep but during medical crises — cardiac arrest, severe trauma, surgical complications — when the brain is shutting down, not cycling through sleep stages. They are remarkably coherent and structured, with a consistent sequence of elements that researchers have documented across thousands of cases. And they do not fade. NDErs consistently report that the memory of their experience is more vivid and enduring than any ordinary memory — even decades later. As Jeffrey Long has noted, NDErs do not wake up mid-scene the way dreamers do; their experiences unfold as a complete, coherent whole with a natural beginning and ending.⁹ J. Steve Miller observed in his systematic study of consecutively uploaded NDEs on the NDERF website that he never saw anyone returning mid-conversation or mid-storyline, as is common when waking from dreams. The experience was always a completed whole.¹⁰

NDEs Are Not Hallucinations

Hallucinations are false perceptions generated by a malfunctioning brain. They can be caused by fever, delirium, mental illness, extreme stress, or sensory deprivation. They are typically disorganized, confusing, and often frightening. They do not follow a consistent pattern from person to person. A hallucinating person with a high fever might see spiders on the ceiling; another might hear voices; a third might experience nothing unusual at all. The content is random and idiosyncratic — shaped by the individual's fears, expectations, and the specific type of brain dysfunction involved.

NDEs are strikingly different. They follow a remarkably consistent pattern across individuals, cultures, ages, and medical conditions. A cardiac arrest patient in Atlanta, a drowning victim in India, a child in Seattle, and a combat soldier in Afghanistan all report the same core elements — leaving the body, enhanced consciousness, encountering light, meeting deceased loved ones, experiencing overwhelming love. The cross-cultural consistency of NDEs is one of the strongest arguments against the hallucination hypothesis. Hallucinations are random. NDEs are patterned.

But the most devastating problem with the hallucination hypothesis is this: hallucinations do not produce verified information. A hallucinating person does not accurately describe the surgical instruments being used on them while their eyes are taped shut and their brain shows no electrical activity. A hallucinating person does not report a conversation happening in the hospital waiting room three floors away. A hallucinating person does not identify a shoe sitting on a third-floor window ledge that no one else knew was there. Veridical NDEs — cases where the NDEr reports specific, accurate information they could not have known through normal sensory means — demolish the hallucination explanation. We will examine these cases in detail in Chapter 6.

NDEs Are Not Drug-Induced Experiences

Some critics have suggested that NDEs are caused by drugs administered during medical emergencies — painkillers, anesthetics, or endogenous chemicals like DMT (dimethyltryptamine) that the brain may release under extreme stress. But the evidence does not support this. First, many NDEs occur in situations where no drugs were administered — drowning victims, cardiac arrest patients who collapsed outside the hospital, accident victims found at the scene. Second, drug-induced experiences have a very different character from NDEs. They are typically fragmented, bizarre, and disorienting, with distorted perceptions of the body and surroundings. NDEs, by contrast, are coherent, structured, and described as more real than real life. Third, the specific drug most often proposed as a cause of NDEs — DMT — has never been demonstrated to be released in sufficient quantities in the dying human brain to produce any experience at all, let alone the specific, patterned experience of an NDE.¹¹ We will address these naturalistic explanations more comprehensively in Appendix B.

NDEs Are Not Psychotic Episodes

Psychotic episodes involve a break from reality — hearing voices that are not there, seeing things that do not exist, experiencing paranoid delusions. They are symptoms of mental illness. NDEs, by contrast, occur in people with no history of mental illness, during physical medical crises (not psychiatric ones), and they produce the opposite of psychotic disorientation. NDErs report extraordinary clarity, not confusion. They feel more lucid, not less. And the aftereffects of NDEs — decreased fear of death, increased compassion, deepened spirituality — are the opposite of the deterioration typically associated with psychotic episodes. Miller's red flag system for evaluating NDE reports specifically notes that signs of mental illness are a reason to treat a report with caution, precisely because genuine NDEs and psychotic experiences are different phenomena.¹²

NDEs Are Not the Same as Deathbed Experiences

Deathbed experiences (DBEs) — visions of deceased relatives, angels, or heavenly landscapes that occur during the dying process — are a closely related but distinct phenomenon. In a DBE, the dying person typically does not return. They are in the active process of dying and usually pass away shortly after the experience. DBEs share some features with NDEs (encounters with deceased loved ones, visions of light, overwhelming peace), but they occur in a different medical context and are experienced by people who do not come back to report them — the reports come from bystanders, family members, and medical staff who witnessed the dying person's reactions. We will examine deathbed experiences in depth in Chapter 4.

NDEs Are Not Simply Out-of-Body Experiences

An out-of-body experience (OBE) — the sensation of being outside one's physical body — can occur in a variety of contexts, including meditation, extreme fatigue, certain neurological conditions, and near-death events. But an OBE by itself is not an NDE. The out-of-body experience is typically just one element of a larger NDE, which also includes encountering light, meeting deceased persons, life reviews, and other features. A person who has a brief sensation of floating above their body during sleep paralysis has had an OBE, not an NDE. The distinction matters because OBEs and NDEs are sometimes conflated in popular discussion, leading to confusion about what the NDE evidence actually shows.

NDEs Are Not Mere Close Brushes with Death

Finally, not every person who comes close to death has an NDE. In Pim van Lommel's landmark prospective study of 344 consecutive cardiac arrest patients in Dutch hospitals, only 62 — about 18 percent — reported an NDE.¹³ The remaining 82 percent survived cardiac arrest without any recalled experience at all. Similarly, in Sam Parnia's AWARE study, which spanned 15 hospitals across three countries, only a minority of cardiac arrest survivors reported awareness during their clinical death.¹⁴ This is a critical point: NDEs are not an automatic result of nearly dying. Something more is happening — something that cannot be explained simply by the physical process of dying, since most people who come equally close to death do not have the experience.

The Core Features of Near-Death Experiences

Now that we know what an NDE is and what it is not, let us look at what actually happens during one. Researchers have identified a set of core features — recurring elements that appear with remarkable consistency across thousands of NDE reports from around the world. No two NDEs are exactly alike, and not every NDEr reports every element. But the overall pattern is unmistakable. Let me walk through the major features one by one, drawing on the research data compiled by Jeffrey Long, John Burke, Michael Sabom, and others.

Long's research through the NDERF database — the largest collection of NDE accounts in the world, with over four thousand reports — identified twelve common elements of NDEs, which generally occur in a consistent order.¹⁵ Burke notes that researchers do not all agree on the interpretation of these elements, but they agree on the core experience itself.¹⁶ Here are the twelve elements, along with the percentage of NDErs who report each one, based on Long's research:

1. Out-of-Body Experience (OBE)

The most common initial element of an NDE is the sensation of separating from the physical body. The NDEr suddenly finds himself or herself floating above the body, looking down at the scene below with extraordinary clarity. They can see the medical team working. They can hear conversations. They can observe details that they should have no way of knowing — because their eyes are closed, their brain is not functioning, and they are, for all medical purposes, dead.

The NDERF survey asked NDErs, "Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?" Of those responding, 74.9 percent said yes.¹⁷ Burke's summary of Long's research across 1,300 NDEs from around the world yielded a similar figure: 75.4 percent reported an out-of-body experience.¹⁸

One woman who nearly bled to death during a C-section delivery described the experience this way: she looked down at her son's incubator and wondered if she was dead — but she felt at peace, knowing her son was all right. She was later given a photograph of him taken just after birth, and it looked exactly the same as what she had seen from above, even though he had been on the other side of the curtain from her physical body.¹⁹

Michael Sabom, in his research with cardiac arrest patients, found case after case in which patients who reported OBEs were able to describe their own resuscitations with stunning accuracy. One patient, Pete Morton, described the resuscitation procedure so precisely — the doctor striking his chest, the insertion of a needle, the jolt of the defibrillator — that Sabom said the recording could have been used to train physicians. These were not vague impressions. They were detailed, accurate observations made at a time when the patient's brain showed no electrical activity.²⁰

For our purposes in this book, the out-of-body experience is especially significant. If a person's consciousness can genuinely separate from their body and observe events from a vantage point outside the body — and if the observations can be verified — then we have powerful evidence that consciousness is not simply a product of brain activity. We have evidence for the soul. We will explore this in much greater depth in Chapters 6 through 8.

2. Heightened Senses and Cognition

This is one of the most counterintuitive and significant features of NDEs. At a time when the brain is shutting down — when it should be producing less consciousness, not more — NDErs consistently report enhanced mental clarity. Their thinking is faster, sharper, and more lucid than at any point in their normal waking life. Their perception is heightened. Colors are more vivid. Sounds are more distinct. Understanding is deeper. Many NDErs use the phrase "more real than real" to describe the quality of their experience.

The NDERF survey asked, "How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness?" An extraordinary 74.4 percent of NDErs indicated that they had "more consciousness and alertness than normal."²¹

One NDEr who had been in a car accident described the experience: "The colors were intense and detailed — patterns, textures, weavings of color and sound. I knew this wasn't of our world, but it was all natural and didn't need explanation. I understood the essence of creativity and could create my own visions: everything I thought became a vision and swirled around me."²²

Shaun Tabatt, in his NDE framework, describes this heightened sensory experience as having one's senses "cranked up to a superhuman level." NDErs report not needing to talk — communication becomes instantaneous, a kind of thought-to-thought or spirit-to-spirit exchange. Many report receiving or having access to vast knowledge that gives them a deep understanding of things they could never have grasped before.²³

3. Intense and Generally Positive Emotions

The emotional quality of NDEs is, for most experiencers, beyond anything they have ever felt on earth. Overwhelming peace. Indescribable love. Complete safety. Joy that saturates every fiber of their being. The words NDErs use to describe these emotions consistently fall short of the reality — they say that human language simply cannot capture what they felt.

Long's research found that 76.2 percent of NDErs reported intense and generally positive emotions, with "incredible peace" being among the most frequently used descriptions.²⁴ Peace and love are among the most common words NDErs use to describe what they felt during their experiences.²⁵

One NDEr who had a cardiac arrest described it this way: "On the other side, the arms of my loved ones welcomed me home. The feelings weren't of this earth. The temperature was perfect — not too hot or too cold, like I was wrapped in a warm blanket. The intense love just can't be described in words. Amazing peace and calmness engulfed me. ... And that love of God felt like the first time you see your baby or the first time you fall in love — multiplied by ten thousand."²⁶

A fifteen-year-old who attempted suicide by overdose and had an NDE reported: "I remember going through a tunnel and sitting on God's lap. He was in an overstuffed chair and had his arm around me. ... He told me that I had to go back, it wasn't my time yet; there were things I still needed to do and experience. I didn't want to leave, but I didn't protest. I felt the most intense love that I've never felt before or since."²⁷

Notice something important here: the emotional content of NDEs is consistently positive, even for people who were not religious, not expecting an afterlife, and in some cases actively attempting to end their lives. The love and peace they encountered were not things they were looking for — they were things that found them.

4. Passing Through a Tunnel

A significant number of NDErs report moving through a dark tunnel, passageway, or corridor toward a brilliant light. This transitional experience — the feeling of being drawn rapidly through an enclosed space toward something luminous and inviting — is one of the most iconic images associated with NDEs. It is reported by about 33.8 percent of NDErs in Long's research.²⁸

While this is a well-known NDE element, it is worth noting that it is not the most common feature. The majority of NDErs do not report a tunnel experience. Some move directly from the out-of-body state into an encounter with light or deceased relatives. Others describe a sudden shift in location rather than a gradual passage through a tunnel. The tunnel is a real and significant element for those who experience it, but its absence from a given NDE report does not make the experience any less genuine.

5. Encountering a Brilliant Light

One of the most frequently reported and theologically significant elements of NDEs is the encounter with a brilliant, otherworldly light. This is not an ordinary light. NDErs describe it as brighter than anything on earth — brighter than the sun — and yet not painful or blinding. It is warm, welcoming, and deeply personal. Many NDErs say that the light is not merely a visual phenomenon but a living presence. The light is the being, and the being is light. It radiates love, knowledge, and acceptance.

Long's research found that 64.6 percent of NDErs reported encountering a mystical or brilliant light.²⁹ In his God Study — an analysis of 420 qualifying NDEs from the most recent NDERF survey — Long found that 45.5 percent of NDErs reported encountering specific information or awareness that God or a supreme being exists. This is a higher percentage than those who reported encountering a tunnel, meeting deceased loved ones, or having a life review.³⁰

The theological significance of the light encounter will be explored in detail in Chapters 12 and 13, where we will examine who this being of light is and why the description matches the biblical portrayal of God more closely than any other religious or philosophical concept of the divine.

6. Encountering Deceased Relatives or Friends

Many NDErs report meeting people who have already died — family members, friends, and sometimes strangers who turn out, upon later investigation, to be previously unknown deceased relatives. The deceased typically appear healthy, youthful, and radiantly happy, even if they died of a chronic or disfiguring illness. The reunion is nearly always joyful.³¹

Long's research found that 57.3 percent of NDErs reported encountering other beings, whether mystical beings or deceased relatives and friends.³² Importantly, NDErs almost always encounter people who are actually deceased — not people who are still alive. Miller noted in his systematic study that among the NDEs he considered likely authentic, he never saw anyone reporting a living person on the other side who was also alive in this world.³³

Some of the most evidentially powerful NDE cases involve NDErs encountering deceased persons whose death was unknown to them at the time of the NDE. If a dying person "hallucinates" seeing a relative they expected to see on the other side, that is not very interesting. But when they see someone whose death they did not know about — and express surprise — hallucination and expectation are both ruled out. We will examine these evidential cases in Chapter 14.

7. A Sense of Altered Time or Space

NDErs frequently report that time behaves differently during their experience. Time seems to slow down, speed up, or cease to exist entirely. Many describe a sense of timelessness — of being in an eternal present where past, present, and future are experienced simultaneously. Long's data shows that 60.5 percent of NDErs reported a sense of alteration in time or space.³⁴

One NDEr who was in a motorcycle accident described it this way: "No speed or slow or time! Only 'being.' I can see everything around me but don't feel any pain or stress. Everything is heightened and accelerated into pure light energy, with no sense of space or time. I'm more alive than I've ever felt before."³⁵

The experience of altered time is fascinating theologically, and we will explore it in depth in Chapter 16. For now, simply note that NDErs consistently report entering a realm where the ordinary constraints of time and space no longer apply — a realm that sounds remarkably like the biblical concept of eternity.

8. The Life Review

Perhaps the most morally and theologically significant element of many NDEs is the life review — a panoramic, often instantaneous replay of the person's entire life. During the life review, NDErs do not merely watch events from their past as if watching a movie. They re-experience them — and, most remarkably, they experience the events from the perspective of the people they affected. They feel the pain they caused others. They feel the joy they brought to others. Every act of kindness, every act of cruelty, every moment of love and every moment of indifference is replayed with perfect clarity and total emotional impact.

Long's data indicates that 22.2 percent of NDErs reported a life review — making it one of the less common elements, but one of the most profoundly transformative when it occurs.³⁶ We will explore the life review in rich detail in Chapter 15, where we will examine its remarkable parallels with the biblical concept of divine judgment.

9. Encountering Otherworldly Realms

Many NDErs describe visiting places of surpassing beauty — lush gardens, brilliant meadows, crystal cities, mountains, rivers, and landscapes filled with colors and sounds that do not exist on earth. These heavenly realms are described with a vividness and consistency that goes far beyond what we would expect from random hallucination. Long's research found that 52.2 percent of NDErs reported encountering otherworldly realms.³⁷

Tabatt notes that when NDErs cross over to the other side, they encounter entire cities, structures, roads, and vast landscapes — very much like what we might encounter on earth, yet somehow far more beautiful, vivid, and real. Sometimes these landscapes are simply scenery; other times they carry profound meaning.³⁸ We will examine what NDErs describe seeing in heaven — and how those descriptions compare with the biblical picture — in Chapter 17.

10. Encountering or Learning Special Knowledge

During their NDEs, many experiencers report receiving extraordinary knowledge or understanding. They feel as though they suddenly comprehend the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, the purpose of existence. Some describe it as a "download" of information — a vast, instantaneous transfer of understanding that is difficult or impossible to retain once they return to their bodies. Long's data shows that 56 percent of NDErs reported encountering or learning special knowledge.³⁹

11. Encountering a Boundary or Barrier

About 31 percent of NDErs report reaching some kind of border, barrier, or point of no return — a river, a fence, a wall of light, or simply a sense that if they go any further, they will not be able to return to their bodies.⁴⁰ This boundary experience is often connected with the decision or command to return. Some NDErs are told by a deceased relative or by the being of light that "it is not your time." Others are given a choice: stay or return. Many desperately want to stay but feel compelled to return for the sake of their children or an unfinished purpose.

12. A Return to the Body

All NDErs, by definition, return. That is what makes them near-death experiences rather than death itself. Long's data shows that 58.5 percent of NDErs were aware of a decision or process of returning to their bodies.⁴¹ The return is often described as sudden and jarring — like being pulled back through a tunnel at great speed, or snapping back into the body like a rubber band. Many NDErs describe the return as deeply disappointing. They did not want to leave the peace, the love, the beauty of what they experienced. They were sent back.

Profound Aftereffects: Lives Permanently Changed

The core elements of NDEs are significant enough on their own. But what makes them even more compelling is what happens afterward. NDEs are not mere experiences — they are transformative events that permanently change the lives of those who have them. The aftereffects are so consistent and so dramatic that they constitute additional evidence that NDEs involve contact with something real rather than a hallucinated fantasy.

Researchers including Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, and Jeffrey Long have documented a remarkably consistent set of aftereffects across NDErs:

Loss of the fear of death. This is perhaps the single most universal aftereffect. People who have had NDEs almost universally report that they are no longer afraid to die. Death is no longer an ending but a doorway. They have seen what lies beyond, and it is good.

Increased love and compassion. NDErs consistently describe becoming more loving, more compassionate, more concerned with the well-being of others. The life review, in which they experienced the impact of their actions on others, leaves a permanent mark. How you treat other people is what matters most — this is the most common "lesson" NDErs bring back.

Decreased materialism. Money, status, possessions, career advancement — the things that drive much of modern life — become far less important to NDErs. What matters is love, relationships, and spiritual growth.

Enhanced spirituality. NDErs report a deepened sense of the spiritual dimension of life. They become more prayerful, more attuned to the presence of God, more convinced that life has transcendent meaning and purpose.

Deepened commitment to relationships. Family, friendships, and genuine human connection become priorities in ways they were not before the NDE.

Sabom's Atlanta Study provided some of the most rigorous data on NDE aftereffects. Using standardized questionnaires including the Life Changes Questionnaire, Sabom compared NDErs with a control group of cardiac surgery patients who had not had NDEs. The NDErs showed statistically significant increases in concern with spiritual matters, a sense of the sacred in life, and an inner sense of God's presence — increases that were dramatically higher than the control group.⁴² Ring, in his pioneering research, documented similar patterns: NDErs consistently shifted their values away from materialism and toward love, compassion, and spiritual depth.⁴³

Long's God Study added a striking statistic to the aftereffects data. Before their NDEs, 39 percent of NDErs believed that "God definitely exists." After their NDEs — an average of twenty-two years later — 72.6 percent believed "God definitely exists." That represents an 86 percent increase in firm belief in God. Long observed that he could not think of any other specific life event associated with such a dramatic increase in belief in the existence of God.⁴⁴

A Brief History of NDE Research

NDEs are not a modern invention. People have been having these experiences — and talking about them — for as long as human history has been recorded. What is modern is the systematic, scientific study of NDEs. Let me trace the history from ancient accounts to the present day.

Pre-Modern Accounts: NDEs Before the Term Existed

Long before anyone coined the term "near-death experience," people who came close to death reported encounters with the afterlife. As Tabatt notes, theoretically near-death experiences have been around since people started dying and coming back — it just depends on whether the experiencer shared their story and whether it was recorded.⁴⁵

One of the earliest recorded accounts comes from Plato's Republic, written around 375 BC. In the Myth of Er, Plato tells the story of a Pamphylian soldier named Er who was killed in battle. His body lay unburied for twelve days. When it was finally placed on the funeral pyre, he suddenly revived and described an extraordinary journey through the afterlife. Er reported being taken to a place where souls were judged, where the righteous ascended and the wicked descended, and where souls gathered in a meadow to share accounts of their experiences. He was told that he had been chosen as a messenger to carry the report of the other world back to the living.⁴⁶

The parallels with modern NDEs are striking: a person who is genuinely dead (or very near death) revives and reports a structured journey through the afterlife, encounters with other souls, a judgment or evaluation process, and a command to return and share the experience. Miller's dissertation on deathbed experiences notes that from time immemorial, spanning many cultures, both NDEs and deathbed experiences have been recorded — Plato's account being one of the earliest examples in Western literature.⁴⁷

In the sixth century AD, Pope Gregory the Great recorded multiple accounts of people who died and returned to life with reports of the afterlife in his Dialogues.⁴⁸ In the eighth century, the English monk Bede recorded the famous NDE of Dryhthelm — a man who died of illness, revived several hours later, and described being given a guided tour of the afterlife by a celestial guide. Dryhthelm reported seeing regions of extreme heat and cold, a fiery hell, and a place of intense and beautiful light. Following his experience, he gave away his possessions and devoted himself to monastic life — a response that closely mirrors the aftereffects seen in modern NDErs.⁴⁹

The Bible itself contains accounts that modern researchers would categorize as related phenomena. At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah — who had been dead for centuries — appeared fully conscious and recognizable, speaking with Jesus (Matthew 17:1–8). The first Christian martyr, Stephen, just before his death, looked intently into heaven and saw "the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55–56) — what today we would call a deathbed vision. The apostle Paul described being "caught up to the third heaven" and hearing things "that cannot be told, which man may not utter" (2 Corinthians 12:2–4) — an experience that shares features with transcendental NDEs.⁵⁰ We will explore these biblical precedents in depth in Chapter 30.

Miller's research notes an important caution about ancient and medieval NDE accounts. The experiences most likely to be written down and passed along were the dramatic, doctrinally useful, or unusual ones — not the more common "core" NDE of simply leaving the body, encountering light, and returning. Medieval people already believed in the soul, God, and the afterlife. The experiences that survived the test of time were more likely to be anomalous cases that spoke of detailed journeys, specific punishments, or reinforcements of niche doctrines.⁵¹ This means we should be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from pre-modern accounts. They confirm that NDEs have always happened, but they are not equivalent to the controlled, systematic data we have today.

Raymond Moody and Life After Life (1975)

The modern study of NDEs begins with Raymond Moody. In the early 1970s, Moody was a philosophy student at the University of Virginia when he heard Dr. George Ritchie — a psychiatrist — lecture about an extraordinary experience he had during World War II. As a young soldier, Ritchie had been pronounced dead from double pneumonia. During the nine minutes he was clinically dead, he had a vivid encounter with a being of light he identified as Jesus, who showed him different realms of the afterlife. After his revival, the experience changed his life permanently. He went on to become a physician, eventually earned a doctorate in psychiatry, and his story later inspired Moody's research.⁵²

Moody began asking his philosophy students to read theories on postmortem survival — and was astonished to discover that about one in every thirty students came forward with a similar story. He started collecting these accounts, and in 1975 he published Life After Life, coining the term "near-death experience" and documenting the common features he had identified across hundreds of reports.⁵³

Moody's work was groundbreaking but limited. It was descriptive rather than systematic. He did not use control groups, standardized instruments, or statistical analysis. He was painting a picture, not proving a thesis. But what he accomplished was enormous: he brought the phenomenon of NDEs to public awareness, gave it a name, and inspired a generation of researchers to study it with scientific rigor.

Kenneth Ring: Life at Death (1980) and Heading Toward Omega (1984)

Kenneth Ring, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, was the first researcher to bring systematic methodology to the study of NDEs. Where Moody had collected and described, Ring measured and analyzed. He used standardized interviews, statistical methods, and controlled comparisons to identify what he called the "core NDE" — the set of features that appeared consistently across different people and different circumstances, transcending cultural variation.⁵⁴

Ring's work was crucial for establishing NDEs as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry. He showed that the phenomenon was real, measurable, and consistent — not a collection of random anecdotes but a structured experience with identifiable features and predictable aftereffects. His later work, Heading Toward Omega, focused on the transformative effects of NDEs and their implications for human consciousness.

Michael Sabom: Recollections of Death (1982) and Light and Death (1998)

Michael Sabom brought something new and essential to NDE research: medical rigor combined with Christian theological engagement. Sabom was a cardiologist in Atlanta who initially dismissed NDEs as nonsense. After hearing a presentation about Moody's book, he was challenged by the presenter to actually ask his patients about their experiences. He did — and was stunned by what he found.

As Burke recounts, when Sabom asked his patient Jane about any unusual experiences during her brush with death, she told him a story that unfolded like the pages of Moody's book. Sabom was "flabbergasted" but resolved to test the phenomenon scientifically. He wanted to see if it would pass scientific muster — and it did.⁵⁵

Sabom's first major study, Recollections of Death (1982), was a landmark. He compared NDE reports with actual medical records and found that patients' descriptions of their resuscitations were remarkably accurate — far more accurate than control patients' guesses about what typical resuscitations look like.

In 1994, Sabom launched the Atlanta Study — a comprehensive two-year investigation involving 160 patients, 47 of whom reported NDEs. He used the Greyson Scale, standardized questionnaires, psychological instruments, and careful control groups to produce what remains one of the most rigorous and thorough studies of NDEs ever conducted. He divided his subjects into conservative Christians, liberal Christians, God-believers, and atheists — a level of theological differentiation that no previous researcher had attempted. His findings, published in Light and Death (1998), showed that NDEs deepened Christian faith rather than undermining it, produced measurable positive changes in spiritual values, and provided veridical evidence that could not be explained by any known brain-based mechanism.⁵⁶

Pim van Lommel: The Lancet Study (2001)

The publication that arguably did the most to establish NDEs as a legitimate scientific phenomenon was Pim van Lommel's prospective study, published in 2001 in The Lancet — one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. Van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, had been prompted to investigate NDEs years earlier when a resuscitated patient expressed profound disappointment at being revived, describing a beautiful tunnel, colors, light, and music he had experienced during his cardiac arrest.⁵⁷

Van Lommel's study was prospective — meaning he set up the study before any NDEs occurred and systematically interviewed every cardiac arrest survivor in 10 Dutch hospitals over a defined period. Of 344 consecutive cardiac arrest patients, 62 (18 percent) reported NDEs. He compared the NDErs with matched controls — cardiac arrest survivors who did not have NDEs. The study was controlled, systematic, peer-reviewed, and published in the world's most respected medical literature.⁵⁸

The significance of van Lommel's study cannot be overstated. It showed that NDEs occurred in patients whose brains showed no measurable activity — patients who were, by every clinical standard, dead. And it showed that the standard physiological explanations (oxygen deprivation, medications, fear of death) could not account for why some cardiac arrest patients had NDEs and others did not, since both groups experienced the same medical crisis.

Sam Parnia: AWARE I (2014) and AWARE II (2023)

Sam Parnia, a critical care physician at NYU Langone Medical Center, launched the largest prospective NDE study ever conducted — the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study, spanning 15 hospitals in three countries. Parnia's approach was innovative: he placed hidden visual targets (images on shelves visible only from above) in cardiac arrest rooms to test whether patients who claimed to have out-of-body experiences during cardiac arrest could accurately report what they saw from their purported vantage point above the body.⁵⁹

AWARE I, published in 2014, found that 39 percent of cardiac arrest survivors who could be interviewed reported some awareness during the time they were clinically dead, even though most did not have full NDEs. While the visual target methodology did not produce a definitive positive result (most cardiac arrests did not occur in rooms with targets, and most NDErs did not look at the ceiling), the study confirmed that awareness during cardiac arrest is far more common than previously believed. AWARE II continued the research with refined methodology and an expanded sample.

Jeffrey Long: NDERF and the God Study (2010, 2016)

Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist, established the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) in 1998 — an online platform where NDErs could share their experiences through a detailed questionnaire of over 100 questions. What began as a modest project became the largest collection of NDEs in the world, with over four thousand accounts submitted from across the globe, translated into over twenty languages by volunteer translators.⁶⁰

Long's first major publication, Evidence of the Afterlife (2010), presented nine lines of evidence that NDEs are real — not hallucinations, not fantasies, not the products of a dying brain. His second book, God and the Afterlife (2016), focused specifically on encounters with God during NDEs. In what he called the "God Study," Long analyzed 420 qualifying NDEs from the most recent version of the NDERF survey and found that 45.5 percent of NDErs reported encountering specific information or awareness that God or a supreme being exists — a higher percentage than those who reported tunnels, deceased loved ones, or life reviews.⁶¹

Long's contribution has been invaluable. The sheer size of the NDERF database, combined with the detail of the questionnaire, has allowed researchers to identify patterns, percentages, and correlations that were impossible with smaller samples. Miller specifically commended the NDERF methodology for several reasons: the accounts are unedited (researchers see the entire experience, not excerpts selected to prove a point); the sample size is large; and the experiences are consecutively uploaded, meaning they can be studied in order of arrival rather than cherry-picked for dramatic content.⁶²

Bruce Greyson: After (2021)

Bruce Greyson, the psychiatrist who developed the NDE Scale and spent over forty years researching NDEs at the University of Virginia, published After in 2021 — a comprehensive overview of the field from its leading academic researcher. Greyson's work represents the culmination of a career devoted to rigorous, peer-reviewed study of NDEs, with over 100 published papers to his credit. His book synthesizes decades of evidence and makes the case that NDEs are real, significant, and not adequately explained by any current scientific model of the brain.⁶³

Penny Sartori: The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (2014)

Penny Sartori, a nurse in a Welsh hospital, conducted one of the most unique NDE studies — a five-year prospective study conducted from the bedside. Sartori systematically interviewed cardiac arrest survivors and compared the descriptions of those who claimed to have had OBEs during their resuscitations with a control group of seasoned cardiac patients who were asked to guess what happened during a typical resuscitation. The results were striking: the control patients' guesses were riddled with errors and misconceptions (many guessed that the defibrillator had been used when it had not), while the NDErs' descriptions were surprisingly accurate.⁶⁴ This finding directly undermines the "lucky guessing" hypothesis and supports the claim that NDErs genuinely perceived their resuscitations from outside their bodies.

Cross-Cultural Universality: NDEs Everywhere, in Everyone

One final point deserves emphasis before we close this chapter. NDEs are not limited to any one culture, religion, age group, or medical condition. They occur across the entire spectrum of human experience. Christians have NDEs. Hindus have NDEs. Muslims have NDEs. Buddhists have NDEs. Atheists and agnostics — people with no expectation whatsoever of an afterlife — have NDEs. Children too young to have absorbed cultural expectations about death and the afterlife report the same core elements as adults. People from every continent, every socioeconomic background, and every medical circumstance report the same basic experience.

This cross-cultural universality is one of the most significant features of the NDE phenomenon. If NDEs were the product of cultural expectation — if Christians saw Jesus because they expected to see Jesus, and Hindus saw Hindu deities because they expected to see Hindu deities — we would expect the content of NDEs to vary dramatically across cultures. But it does not. The core experience — leaving the body, heightened consciousness, intense love, brilliant light, encounters with deceased loved ones, a border or barrier, and a return — is remarkably consistent regardless of the experiencer's cultural or religious background.⁶⁵

Burke emphasizes this point: the reports come from all over the globe, verifying the similarities of the core experience. When studies done on hundreds of children report the same core elements as adults from around the world, you have to stop and consider how so many children — completely unfamiliar with NDE stories — could confirm the same common elements as adults from different cultures and continents.⁶⁶

The prevalence of NDEs is also striking. In a 1982 Gallup poll, an estimated 8 million Americans reported having had near-death episodes. More recent studies in the United States and Germany suggest that approximately 4.2 percent of the population — about one in every twenty-five people — has had an NDE. That translates to approximately 13 million Americans.⁶⁷ These are not rare occurrences. They are happening all around us, all the time — in hospitals, in accident scenes, in homes, in every country on earth. Most people simply do not talk about them unless asked.

Conclusion: A Phenomenon That Cannot Be Ignored

In this chapter, we have established the foundations. We know what a near-death experience is: a profound, structured, coherent experience occurring during a close brush with death or actual clinical death, characterized by a consistent set of core features including out-of-body perception, heightened consciousness, encounters with light and deceased loved ones, life reviews, otherworldly realms, and profound, life-changing aftereffects. We know what an NDE is not: it is not a dream, not a hallucination, not a drug trip, not a psychotic episode, and not a mere product of cultural expectation.

We have seen that NDE research is a serious, rigorous scientific enterprise with a history spanning more than fifty years, conducted by competent medical professionals and published in the world's most respected journals. We have a standardized measurement tool — the Greyson NDE Scale — that allows researchers to identify, quantify, and compare NDEs with precision. And we have an enormous body of data, drawn from thousands of reports across cultures and continents, showing that NDEs are real, consistent, and transformative.

But we have not yet addressed the most important questions. If NDEs are real — if they are not hallucinations or dying-brain artifacts — then what are they? What do they mean? Are they evidence that the soul is real and can function independently of the brain? Are they compatible with what the Bible teaches about death, the afterlife, and the God who made us? And can they be trusted — or might some of them involve deception?

These are the questions the rest of this book will address. In Chapter 3, we will examine the methodology of NDE research in more detail — the difference between good evidence and bad evidence, and why not all NDE reports should be treated equally. In Chapter 4, we will explore the closely related phenomenon of deathbed experiences. In Chapter 5, we will lay the biblical and theological foundation for substance dualism — the view that human beings have both bodies and immaterial souls — because if the soul is real, then NDEs are not anomalies but exactly what we would expect.

The evidence is waiting for us. Let us continue.

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