This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 7, Issue 1, from 1993.
The near-death experience is much in vogue at the moment. It is what is termed ‘flavour of the month’. The reason for such experiences to be so named is somewhat obscure. It is very difficult to understand how anyone can know with any degree of certainty they are near death unless they have experienced the actual event. Death being by its nature and definition completely irreversible, there can be no-one who is available to testify as to the state of mind a few moments prior to the event.
Conventional folk wisdom has it that at the moment of death there is a flash of all life’s events passing through the conscious memory. This seems to be confirmed by the many people who have been in fear of their lives during moments of peril.
For myself, and I offer my own experiences as valid to authenticate my first hand examination of the subject, I have been in such situations. I have suffered the effects of heavy bombing, I have been caught in mid-pacific on a burning liner, I have clung to a mountain-side by my finger tips, I have been frozen in the wastes of Canada and burnt in the heat of desert sands in Australia. And yes I have been in car crashes and I have been dragged across country for emergency operations. I think I well qualify as one who has faced death on innumerable occasions. I have impeccable qualifications for the subject. But the plain fact is, I have never yet died!
So the first question is, have I ever been at the point of death? When the bombs fell and I was blasted across a fence, when I saw the vivid flash and was surrounded by debris, or when I was blinded by the headlights of the oncoming car, in that moment when I thought the end had come, was it truly a moment of near death? From a logical point of view it obviously wasn’t because I am still here. On these occasions of immediate danger everything happens so quickly. I saw no tunnels of light or dark. I had nothing other than an instinct of self preservation and the immediate apprehension of total catastrophe. When rubble was flying around my head, and I heard the grinding noise of bones crunching against the solid mass of metal, my dominant thought ceased to be fear – it was a reasoned acceptance that this was the end. I cannot believe I am unusual in this.
It is all very well trying to analyse the experiences of others. Until you have been in the position of facing death you cannot know what actually happens. And this folk wisdom adds nothing, nor do all the reports collated bring any extra factual knowledge to a situation that is at once immediate and personal to the particular individual.
Death is not a progressive process. You are either dead or you are alive. There is no in between. We have today the situation of people in hospital on life-support machines. The Courts are called upon to decide whether support machines should be turned off. The term ‘clinical death’ is used to sanction acts that otherwise would be termed ‘killing’. This does not mean anyone has truly found a test for death. The real test in such situations must be whether it is possible by the use of such machines to reactivate such bodies after the machines have been switched off and all signs of life have disappeared. There will be some who will say it is possible to reactivate apparently dead bodies. They however are talking of minutes, not hours and days. Death is an unknown quantity. All evidence suggests it is irreversible.
Before I move on let us have a look at this life story tradition. Can it be true that every single episode flashes before your eyes just before you die. First of all comes the obvious questions, why should they? Surely this is bound up with traditional religious concepts of guilt and punishment. The continuing image of the book held in the hands of the Angel Gabriel at the gates of heaven which holds your sins laid out in explicit detail. You have a mental review of all your sins which up to this moment you have kept hidden. Now could this be the source of this belief?
Setting aside the idea of time, there is another problem. How is it possible to instantaneously assimilate everything that has happened to you in life? This must include all your education, the books, films, television and plays you have seen. The details of all the people you have met plus all those incidental experiences of life which go to make up your place in society. Is it seriously contended all this runs through your mind in order you can consciously assess it for the sole reason that you are about to die.
In my experience, and I must remind you that I have had plenty of opportunity to study what happens at these critical moments of danger, such does not take place. Oh yes, I have had the quick flash-back to some isolated high point when I enjoyed a brief emotional experience. When the danger has been great and threatening ultimate extinction I have had the moments of regret at neglected opportunities – each item shooting up unbidden into my consciousness like cameo shots in a film. But whole sequences, never.
And we come to this amazing tunnel; to the people who under the power of anaesthetic, or in some form or another lie unconscious and to all outward appearance dead. Well I’ve had that too. The amazing dream which explains the meaning of life, and the bright lights somewhat reminiscent of a migraine attack. Not once have I had any revelation of some other world or reason for living which was not based firmly in terms of my experience in this world. From what I have read all descriptions of an entry into the after-life follow the paintings and imagery of the major religions. This all suggests to me that there is little to be gained by this form of study. It is all internal and subjective. These are common experiences by reason of the common heritage of conditioning and common physiology.
As a person who is very tall and living in a cottage which is very small I keep banging my head. In passing I can verify the Pavlovian reaction does not apply to humans, only dogs. In twenty years I have never managed to remember the beams are unduly low. Each time I bang my head I experience pain and a flash of light. Sometimes it is like an explosion and a great ball of white power rolls down from the point of impact. All memories are blotted out, then I remember, I have hit my head again.
I attribute nothing to the lights inside my head except to conclude my understanding of the behaviour of electricity can produce similar results. I know what I see inside my head is not seeing at all. It is meaningless in terms of the mental process. One fine day I could crack my skull and kill myself. I cannot accept these lights are the forecast of an entry into another plane of life, nor that in the timeless void between life and death I will have revealed to me what lies in store, or what I have done.
There is a curiously mistaken assumption that what is seen is what is there. What is seen is only the eyes as sensing devices interpret what is there is accordance with learning and conditioning. There is no film screen inside the head upon which a replica image of the world is placed. Seeing tunnels, bright lights or anything else is no more than illusion. Another part of the brain translates that illusion into some coded message that the brain endeavours to turn into some form of sense for the individual in terms of known experience. For those who are firmly rooted in a tradition of an afterlife anything out of the ordinary can be interpreted by the brain as evidence for the belief. Tunnel vision is very comforting. Seeking a mystery in mundane experience is equally a form of tunnel vision, it perpetuates that desire to find niches in the world of learning. There are many mysteries in this world worthy of exploration, but the near-death experience is not one of them. The mystery is why anyone should think we are not all near death all of the time.
