Winston Churchill said,
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”
Welcome to The Soul Podcast, I’m Stacey Wheeler.
There’s value in making a point well. This series on NDEs was challenging. While writing it I realized I might be including more details than needed to make the case that NDEs are evidence of the Soul. Research and quotes from Moody and Grayson were part of this – as well as the historic refence points. I know for some; quotes and history can be a bit dry. But I decided to keep those in, just in case any of you are on the fence about whether NDEs are acceptable evidence. In order to consider NDEs as evidence of the Soul, it’s helpful to see all the research that’s been done. The research I’ve seen has convinced me there’s something profound going on. Something we can neither prove nor disprove. And I lean towards belief.
I was only able to make this shift after seeing that people have been talking and writing about out of body experiences for a long time. So, I could see that there is more to this than the information we’ve gathered in the past four of five decades. Now, whether these people actually returned from the other side… we can never know for sure. But we can’t deny that these were deeply spiritual experiences. Can you think of any other experience that can bring such a transformation in a person’s way of seeing their world… in such a beautiful way -and so quickly? I’d happily spend years in therapy to get that sort of transformation. These people get those results from an experience that lasts for merely seconds or minutes. And it seems it’s been happening for thousands of years.
Remember that, when considering this phenomenon.
I felt the case studies and historical refences were useful evidence. And at the risk of being less-entertaining, I included them for the value I felt they provided.
So, If I’m using a pile driver, as Churchill says… it’s in the interest of giving you all the information possible, so you can make an informed conclusion about NDEs.
It seems each year we move closer to answers when new discoveries lead to more questions.
There’s new research coming around all the time, from cases all around the world. And some of the most compelling information comes from those who weren’t looking at the topic of near death but came face to face with it by unexpected circumstances.
An article in February 2022 titled, Life may actually flash before your eyes before death, UofL neurosurgeon says, detailed a surprise discovery which opened a new conversation about NDEs and made a doctor question what he’d been taught.
You see, a patient died while connected to equipment used to read his brainwaves. The patient was being monitored with EEG equipment because he’d had seizure activity earlier. The medical staff didn’t know the man was about to die …and dying patients aren't usually attached to this type of equipment. So, this provided an unintended opportunity to capture the activity of a brain at the time of death.
And what the doctor saw made him question the definition of “time of death.” In the 30 seconds before the patient's heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories.
It continued 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped beating - the point at which a patient is typically declared dead.
Heres what Dr. Ajmal Zemmar said,
AUDIO HERE “Nobody ever recorded from a dying human brain,” University of Louisville neurosurgeon Dr. Ajmal Zemmar said. “This is the first time that we’re doing that. So what we knew before was these experiences people would tell us about near death, but nobody knew what the brain would do.”
“Our study is the first ever to show that these oscillatory waves are present in the dying human brain, which may provide a neurophysiological substance, a brain signal form, for what we call near-death experiences.”
So, here we see a doctor, who’s not looking for information about life after death… being faced with a situation that makes him question what he’d been taught. It’s unusual situations like these that move some doctors away from their rigid understanding of death and the possibility of an afterlife.
And it’s beautiful, seeing academic interest around NDEs continue to grow and gain legitimacy. It’s taken a long time to get the level of interest we see today.
And it shouldn’t surprise us that there seem to be more and more doctors exposed to these unexplainable situations. Modern medicine makes it possible to bring more people back from the brink of death than ever before. And it makes sense that when you have more people who’ve almost died, a certain percentage will report an NDE. Many of these are heart attack victims.
In 2020, a Scientific American article reported “About one in 10 patients with cardiac arrest in a hospital setting report experiencing an NDE.” The article reported,
“Thousands of survivors of these harsh medical situations tell of leaving their damaged bodies behind and encountering a realm beyond everyday existence, unconstrained by the usual boundaries of space and time. These powerful, mystical experiences can lead to permanent transformation of their lives.”
When we pull back from the cardiac arrest patients and look at the whole population, we see there’s still a large portion of the population who’ve had an NDE. Dr Bruce Grayson, who we heard from in the past few episodes, estimates one in 20 people have had one.
That’s about nine million people who’ve had this experience -in the US alone. This is clearly a wide-spread phenomenon. In a 2016 paper, Dr. Greyson said,
“Given the increasing incidence of NDEs and their potential contribution to our understanding of consciousness, their relevance cannot be understated, nor should it be ignored.”
The “one in 10” statistic got me wondering if there are really that many people who actually have out of body experiences. So, I did an initial reach out to my friend group and got an immediate response.
In the case of my friend Milo, he said this happened as a teenager. Milo said,
“I was around 15 or so (and) I fell from a pulley swing at a height of maybe 15 or 20 ft.” He told me, “My friends say that I curled up in a tight ball as I tumbled, and I landed straight on my head. I was unconscious for probably at least 10 minutes. Long enough for them to run up into the house and get my dad and for him to run down the hill to where I was and check on me….” He said, “I had a bad concussion, and I probably wasn't really near death unless I had landed differently and broke my neck. But what was odd was that I had memories and visions of myself falling and the other kids running around and my dad coming down the hill to check on me. The visions were from a perspective of the point where I left the rope swing, from the vantage point at which I started to fall. It was like I knew I was falling potentially to my death, and I just stayed (up) there while my body fell. Then it was like I realized I was going to be okay and snapped back into my body and woke up. To this day I remember even the images. I've often wondered if it was all in my head and I fabricated these images but at the time I was pretty convinced that I left my body...”
Milo is about 40 now but the incident stays with him. It woke a curiosity in him. He said,
“…I pondered it off and on (over the years) and I pondered it in relationship to my own potential spirituality, am I just a physical body or am I something else?”
His case also supports what Dr. Raymond Moody has said about these cases being deeply personal. And about how people are hesitant to talk about them. (I introduced Moody in the first NDE episode).
I’ve known Milo many years and have shared plenty of deep conversations. And his out of body experience has never come up. It’s something he doesn’t go out of his way to share. So, it makes me wonder how many other I know who’ve had this experience…
And the out of body experience (without death) isn’t all that rare as it turns out.
In the late 1800s, Swiss Geologist Albert Heim fell and nearly died while mountaineering. He had the same sort of out of body experience Milo talked about. The experience was profound, and it triggered decades of research. Heim wanted to understand what he had experienced. In the 25 years that followed, he interviewed other near-death survivors -most of them from climbing accidents.
Heim looked at people who said they left the body in the moment it was in great peril -and death might be imminent. He gathered many cases where the near-death experiencers shared surprisingly similar stories.
Like we’ve seen with the modern research around NDEs, people Heim spoke with said their experience was strongly spiritual or religious. He found that 95 percent of such accident victims experienced being near death as exceedingly pleasant.
In 1892 Heim presented his findings and published them in German that same year. In doing this, Heim became the first person to publish research on what would later be referred to as NDEs.
But going back to the 10% and 20% claims…
A 2019 study showed similar results to the Scientific American claim. In a group of over 1000 people from 35 different countries about 10% reported having had a near death experience.
I found other studies and polls that reported a five percent rate of NDEs. So, the numbers vary but even using the lowest of these estimates, most likely we all know at least one person who’s had an NDE. Consider the 5% statistic; that means one person out of any group of 25 has had one. The next time you’re on a passenger jet (of average size) look around the plane. If it’s at or near capacity, odds are 11 people on that flight have had an NDE. It’s a significant number of people.
Looking back at my friend Milo’s experience. It seems even the most basic out of body experience (and I don’t think that sentence even makes sense…) but even the most basic out of body experience can leave a person with a more spiritual nature. The experience stayed with him. He said,
“…I pondered it off and on (over the years) and I pondered it in relationship to my own potential spirituality, am I just a physical body or am I something else?”
There are many questions we might ponder in this life:
-How do I make lots of money?
-How do I make people like me?
-How can I get more respect?
… we’ve all had these thoughts. Even if we may not want to admit it.
And these are age old thoughts based in our need to be accepted by our outer world.
Questions like Milo’s –
“…am I just a physical body or am I something else?”
That’s also an age-old question. It’s the question of philosophers and mystics. And this thought is directed at our inner world. Questions like this are the questions that compel us to spiritual growth.
My friend Milo is a deep, thoughtful person. There is no shallowness to him. He is genuine and kind. And I have to wonder if that comes partly from his experience.
How do you feel about it?
Are you just a physical body… or something more?
We have just one segment left in the NDE series. I’ll get a little poetic about the human existence and look at what I consider the most amazing aspect reported by those who’ve had an NDE. It’s compelling research, what these people said changed the way I see my place in the world. I will also tell you the most powerful evidence I’ve found while doing this series.
Will it be as powerful for you? Come back for the final episode and see.