...visiting Realm-2: The NDE
We first encountered the Near Death Experience (NDE) in Kevin's story. The Near Death Experience is an account which relates the story of a person who nearly died, and in some cases was actually clinically dead for some time, and then is brought back to life. These stories have been recorded for millennia. One of earliest is recounted by Plato in The Republic
...a brave man, Er, the son of Armenius... who happening on a time to die in battle... as he was about to be buried on the twelfth day, when laid on the funeral pile, he revived, and being revived, he told what he saw in the other state...”
Plato, The Republic, Bk 10
Er travels to a place where souls are judged, a beautiful meadow where they all come together and then a journey of return into a new incarnation.
Plato's story is remarkable because it not only depicts an after life experience, but also relates the return of the soul into a new life. We shall return to Plato later.
The Near Death Experience has been reported throughout history since Plato told the tale of Er, but in the second half of the twentieth century, researchers have documented an enormous surge of NDEs. One of the early researchers was Dr Raymond Moody.
Raymond's Story
Raymond Moody was the son of an agnostic surgeon. Religion was not promoted in his own family life. He gained a PhD in philosophy, and then a second PhD in psychology. While he was still an undergraduate, Raymond met a psychiatrist, Dr George Ritchie, who told him of an experience where he was clinically dead for nine minutes. Against all expectations, he had a vivid experience of a journey into the afterlife, and then returned to his body.
Much to his surprise, more and more people started sharing similar stories. By 1975 he had collected 150 accounts of experiences from people who had been declared clinically dead, and published his first book on the subject, Life After Life. Moody's case studies contained a lot of similar features. Some of these are
- Ineffability. The experience cannot be explained in language.
- Feelings of peace. Any feelings of anxiety about the situation fade into a deep peace and acceptance.
- The tunnel. A dark tunnel appears and the individual is drawn into it. They travel through the tunnel at a great speed, and arrive in an experience described as light, or a beautiful landscape.
- Out of the Body. The person experiences that they now inhabit an invisible body. The body is sometimes described as a sphere. In this body they are inaudible to the people in the room. The body is intangible - they can pass through objects, people and walls. The body is weightless. Many experiencers find themselves floating above their body. The senses of hearing and sight become more acute. In this body they can see and hear at any distance simply by focusing attention on what they want to see.
- Meeting others. The person meets relatives and friends who have died before them. Often the meeting with other souls happens hours or even days before a patient dies.
- Meeting a being of light.
- Life review. The person sees their life as a panorama, in reverse order. When recounting this portion of the NDE, the person often remarks that parts of their life such as career achievements and successes receive little attention, whereas the review slows down and focuses on what seemed to be at the time, events of little importance. These events are about the significance of love expressed and knowledge of life obtained. The individual experiences remorse for hurt caused and what they left undone.
Of course, everyone’s experience is different, and no one person describes all Moody’s features. Some of these like the “tunnel” have passed into common speech. In the movie Shrek, Donkey screams at the hero as he sets out on a dangerous task,
“Don’t die, Shrek. If you see a long tunnel, stay away from the light!”