Consciousness after brain death?
Are NDEs nothing more than the subjective mental activity of the person having the experience, or do they have an objective existence? Now, after 30 years of debate, we are finally beginning to see some breakthroughs.
A paper published in Resuscitation, a UK journal of emergency medicine, in February 2001 argued that the spirit could in fact exist independent of the brain.
This clinical study of 63 heart-attack victims treated at Southampton Hospital found seven patients who had formed memories while their hearts were stopped and their brain function was severely impaired, including four who met the Grayson Scale criteria for NDEs. The study stated that these subjects were able to form memories, think, and reason, as well as mentally explore their surroundings and hold conversations, during an NDE. This observation led Dr. Samuel Parnia, the study's designer, to propose further study of an important question: Can consciousness persist when there is no respiration, pulse, or brain activity?
An NDE-related study published in The Lancet in late 2001 created an even bigger stir. The Netherlands' Rijnstate Hospital tracked 344 patients it treated for myocardial infarction over a four-year period for eight years after their treatment. Some 62 of these had had NDEs, and the rest served as a control group. The Rijnstate study showed those who had had an NDE also experienced major changes in their lives afterwards. Specifically, they lost interest in material gain and no longer feared death.
The debate over the causes of NDEs has drawn a seemingly endless stream of researchers into the fray, the most significant result of which has been a recognition of the common aftereffects of the experience. These include a newfound appreciation for life among people who had previously been suicidal, an end to drug use among former addicts, a concern for others on the part of the previously self-centered, and a sense of a mission larger than oneself.
Tung Yi-pu's NDE, for example, left her with new spiritual strength and a sense of mission. Though her own life has been hard and without a penny to her name, she has found the means to save many from depression and suicide.
The 50-year-old Tung was abused as a child by the family that adopted her as the future wife of their son. Though she did well in school, they did not give her the opportunity to go on to university. Her marriage was also a difficult one. Her husband gambled, ran up debts, and spent his nights with a mistress, leaving her to raise their four children on her own. It was as if all life's misfortunes had fallen upon her shoulders. But an NDE that occurred during a surgery nine years ago changed her outlook. She came to think of her troubles as a gift. "The things that were wrong with them tested me and made me a better person," she says.
Tung now feels that her mission in life is to help other people discover themselves, whether through the study groups she used to organize or the spiritual workshops she has arranged more recently. Though her formal education was limited and she has no professional training, Tung has managed on her own to become adept at tantra yoga, meditation, counseling, and hypnosis. She has achieved tangible results helping others with all of these techniques.
Life's variety
In the West, the mainstream scientific and medical communities have numerous doubts about NDEs. In the East, in contrast, there are long cultural traditions of inquiry into the intangible, extra-physical elements of life. Qigong, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and Zen meditation all provide prominent cases in point. The East therefore is less hesitant about speculating on the causes of NDE phenomena.
"Materialism has had too profound an influence on Western scholarship, which is why you have this kind of wrangling," says Chen Kuo-gen, a professor in the physics department of Soochow University who has also studied TCM and Buddhism in great depth. According to Chen, the West believes that life has a material basis. As a result, the life sciences think in material terms-focusing on macroscopic dissections and microscopic examinations of the genes. The Eastern view of life has never been that tightly constrained. Expressions such as "there's a spirit three feet above your head," "make offerings as if [the ancestors] are present," and "those who walk often at night are sure to meet a ghost," as well as folk customs like grabbing the clothes and calling the name of a child that's been frightened all reflect a belief in spirits and a recognition that other beings can sever the still tenuous grasp a child's spirit has on its body.
Chen believes that life has four levels: the body, energy, information, and the spirit. Spirit, the highest level, sends information (the commands that make life function). It is what Western psychology crudely divides into conscious, subconscious, and unconscious, and what Buddhism calls the eight consciousnesses. Spirit is life's ruler, commanding the mind and the body, and is capable of receiving and transmitting every type of information wave in the universe. In Chen's hierarchy of life, the upper levels are more active, more malleable, and more influential than the lower.
Chen says that most people today think of the spirit as something abstract, and are unaware of its actual existence. People who have undergone NDEs, on the other hand, have been pulled low by some powerful external force, such as an illness or accident, and as a result have experienced the separation of their spirit from their flesh. "When the spirit escapes its fleshy prison, it can contact other spirits and the great energy that fills the universe," argues Chen. "These give it aid and correct its mixed-up instructions." It is therefore perfectly reasonable that such people gain a new perspective on life when they recover from their illness or injury.
Many people's experiece
To better understand the NDE phenomenon in Taiwan, in 2001 Sophia Hsieh had the Chou Ta-kuan Foundation mobilize 36,000 volunteers to conduct interviews throughout Taiwan for one year. Their results led the foundation to estimate that some 120,000 people in Taiwan had had NDEs. While far short of the 13 million Americans (about 7% of the population) a 1994 Gallup poll found to have had an NDE, the Taiwan figure is still a substantial number. The foundation followed up on its survey by establishing the Taiwan Near-Death Research Institute and, in 2003, publishing a collection of Taiwanese research into NDEs entitled Living Renewedly. The book contains the stories of seven persons willing to talk about their NDEs together with scholarly perspectives on the phenomenon.
Those seven people included an accountant, a DJ, a homemaker, a film worker, a student, and a yoga instructor. The basic elements of these Taiwanese NDEs were very similar to those seen abroad. For example, Liao Chu-chien and Yen Mei-yin both had the sense of floating in space, much as Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the Earth bathed in deep-blue light far below him during his own NDE. Brought to the brink of death by a car accident, Tsai Ching-wei relived key moments of his life during his NDE. The experience reawakened a sense of affection for other people and helped him bridge the long-standing distance between himself and his family.
Chung Pei-chun, who underwent an NDE as a child, predicted the death of Chiang Kai-shek and her own aunt's suicide. Liao Chu-chien, who works in the US, saw a plane, a bomb, and the twin towers of the World Trade Center long before the 9/11 attack. Chiu Ching-tun suffered from constant headaches prior to the Chi Chi Earthquake, and predicted a strong earthquake and large numbers of refugees. Chiu also predicted a major plunge in the Taiwan Stock Market. These instances of precognition are consistent with Ring's description of post-NDE precognitive abilities.
"The cross-cultural similarities between NDEs have attracted the interest of researchers," says Kent Lin. But there are cultural differences as well. For example, Westerners tend to interpret the light as Jesus or Mary, whereas Taiwanese tend to see Guanyin or another Buddhist figure. Sophia Hsieh, for example, saw and heard something straight out of a Buddhist sutra. Tung Yi-pu heard Buddhist chanting and saw ancient Indian and Nepalese totems. Similarly, Westerners have a relatively unclear image of the border between life and death, whereas Easterners often turn back after seeing a bridge or a river demarking the netherworld.
East and West also differ in their level of scholarly interest in the phenomenon. Where researchers in Europe, the US, and Japan have delved into the subject, Taiwanese scholars have been relatively indifferent. And most local scholars who are interested just dabble independently. In fact, Kent Lin's work with a medical center is the only instance of cooperation. Drawing on the records of Taiwan's major dialysis centers, Lin and his collaborators collected information on nearly 700 people who had had emergency treatment for a rapid drop in blood pressure. They asked them to fill out surveys and discovered 47 NDEs. Though they published the results of their study in 2003, the medical community remained less interested in their work than the media.
NDEs introduce those who've had them to the vastness of the universe and the mysteries of life and death, and demonstrate to them that life goes on after the death of the body. Venerable Huei Kai, who heads up Nan Hua University's Department of Life and Death Studies, says that in addition to eliminating peoples' fear of death, NDEs make them aware that death is the doorway to another life. "We must therefore live sustainably, and begin preparing [for the reality of death] at the earliest possible moment," he says.
Are you seeking relief from life's travails? Perhaps understanding NDEs, which take people to life's utmost limit, will free you from the imagined duality of life and death and set you upon a new path.