Inexplicably Aware

  Clues into the fundamental nature of emotions

In 2008, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander fell into a deep coma due to bacterial meningitis from a particularly vicious strain of E. coli. 

After an unexpected recovery, he recounted a detailed multisensory out-of-body experience from his time in a coma, when the neocortex of his brain was completely shut down.

While had heard of out-of-body experiences from his patients, he had dismissed them as hallucinations:

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) have been clinically documented since the late 1800s, with an estimated 10% of the population experiencing at least one during their lifetime.

Descriptions of OBEs vary, some consisting of little more than a fleeting sensation of leaving the body, while others recount hyperreal experiences of floating away from their body and traveling to otherworldly places.

OBEs are most commonly reported to occur just before falling asleep or awakening, although they have also been associated with extreme exertion, suffocating, anesthesia, hypnosis, meditation, childbirth, and have even occurred spontaneously during mundane everyday activities, such as washing the dishes.

Doctors have commonly ascribed these experiences to hallucinations or psychoses, although more recent research has linked physiological conditions to OBEs, including faulty wiring in the part of the ear involved in balance, and conditions where the brain fails to integrate multisensory information.

Pilots and astronauts have reported OBEs when extreme G-forces are encountered, as part of a phenomenon called “gravity-induced loss of consciousness.” Even during standard flights, pilots have reported odd sensory experiences, called “break-off phenomenon,” where they feel as though they are on the wing, watching themselves fly the plane.

Pilots described a feeling of being isolated, detached, or separated physically from the world, a phenomenon so common that it inspired a series of studies from the early 50s into the 70s:

"I feel like I… have broken the bonds from the terrestrial sphere."

OBEs have been induced in clinical settings with direct brain stimulations, hypnosis, and hallucinogenic drugs, and have been shown to be associated with sensory deprivation and sensory overload.

While OBEs can be linked to these and other sensory conditions, the notable exceptions are cases where the brain was completely offline due to surgery or clinical death. 

Multisensory experiences without the presence of brain activity challenge current understanding, indicating that there is something fundamental about the nature of our sensory experiences, independent of the brain.

By looking for our consciousness solely inside of the brain, in effect, we are completely disregarding the evidence of experience.

The most convincing accounts come from patients who were clinically dead while experiencing “veridical perception,” an ability to perceive events from a point of view outside of their body.

Veridical perception provides the most compelling evidence of the OBE phenomena, since the experiences can be confirmed by others.

An early well-known case was reported by a woman who was resuscitated at Hartford Hospital in 1985, which was recounted by multiple employees, including her nurse, Kathy Milne:

A thoroughly studied and documented case of veridical perception is that of Pam Reynolds, a patient who underwent a highly invasive operation to remove a brain tumor in 1991. 

Following surgery, she was able to accurately describe aspects of the procedure that had occurred while she was clinically dead, including things out of view from her body, conversations between operating room staff, and the music played in the room.

More recent accounts can be found all over social media, including the story of Anita Moorjani, who after a four-year battle with lymphatic cancer fell into a coma in 2006. After her recovery, she was able to recount events that occurred in multiple areas of the hospital.

Written accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) go back into antiquity with the story of Er from ancient Greece. 

At the end of The Republic by Plato, the philosopher Socrates shares a story of how a soldier killed in battle suddenly revived on his funeral pyre, telling of a journey into the afterlife, where the sky opened up into an enchanted landscape filled with luminous beings.

The first clinical account of an NDE was written by French military physician Pierre-Jean du Monchaux in 1740, which told of a well-respected apothecary in Paris who fell into an unconscious state and was presumed dead, only to regain consciousness and tell of an encounter with a bright light that led to a profound experience in heaven.  

Advances in medical resuscitation since 1960 have helped fuel research into NDEs, as the emergence of intensive-care medicine has enabled people who have passed the threshold of biological death to survive and tell of their experiences.

In the mid-70s, psychiatrist Raymond Moody coined the term “near-death experience,” as he began chronicling common features reported by survivors, including immense feelings of peace and love, meeting dead loved ones, encountering a tunnel of white light, experiencing a life review, and reaching a point of no return.

Since the 1970s studies of these experiences have been conducted around the world, with an estimated 10 to 20 percent of people who come close to death experiencing an NDE. 

In 1978 a group of researchers founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena, now called the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), which maintains an archive of NDE case histories, and publishes the only peer-reviewed scholarly journal covering NDEs.

Clinical analyses of near-death experiences became more prevalent by the 1980s, most notably with the work of cardiologist Michael Sabom, who conducted extensive interviews, finding that patients who had never studied medicine were able to accurately describe complex resuscitation techniques and other medical procedures.

In 1998 radiation oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long began the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, which has logged thousands of NDE accounts:

In the early 2000s, Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, initiated a large-scale study of NDEs after hearing numerous accounts of out-of-body experiences during cardiac arrest, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet:

Another large-scale study of NDEs was published in 2014 involving 2,060 patients from 15 hospitals in the UK, US, and Austria, which was repeated in 2023 involving 567 patients in 25 hospitals. 

In both studies, approximately 40 percent had recollections of conscious experiences during cardiac arrest, with two patients recalling events in the hospital that were validated and timed using auditory stimuli. 

Even blind patients have reported veridical perception, witnessing events that were later confirmed by others. 

In their book Mindsight, Dr. Kenneth Ring and psychologist Sharon Cooper describe 21 accounts of severely visually impaired patients who had NDEs with visual recollections. 

A patient blind from birth recounts details of snow on the streets outside of the hospital:

“It was a very soft snow. It had not been covered with sleet or freezing rain. It was the type of snow that could blow around anywhere. The streets themselves had been plowed, and you could see the banks on both sides of the streets. I knew they were there. I could see them.”

In another case, a patient who suffered optic nerve damage as a baby recalled seeing color for the first time: 

A patient born with severely limited vision described an NDE where she had seen a black tunnel leading to a bright white light, producing an experience of light that she had never had before:

“I wake up and that’s it. I mean, I woke up and I was asking for the light, you know, ‘Where’s the light?’”

In the late 1990s, Arvin Gibson, a retired nuclear engineer who became a near-death researcher, documented dozens of cases, including the testimony of an entire group of elite Mormon firefighters called the Hotshots, who in 1989 succumbed to flames, only to survive with memories of a simultaneous NDE.

After the forest fire had engulfed them, they reported seeing each other floating above their bodies, even communicating with each other. 

One of the crew members had a foot that had been disfigured since birth, and as he came out of his body another firefighter looked at him and said:

“Look, Jose, your foot is straight.”

Interestingly, people who have had a near-death experience report having a decreased interest in organized religion, finding religious dogma to be too limiting, although overwhelmingly, they become inspired to completely change the course of their lives, focusing more on loving and helping people.

With NDEs we see our first major clue into the fundamental nature of emotions themselves. People report a kind of immense peace and acceptance that doesn’t exist in our reality, a feeling of unconditional love even more profound than a parent’s love for their child. 

After an NDE people describe everyday life as feeling less real than their death experience, with our reality being more like a dream.

Experiencers describe how during their NDE they can see more of the light spectrum, witnessing colors that don’t exist in our everyday world. 

These experiences begin to connect our concept of light and color with the spectrum of our emotions, and we can begin to understand how fundamental our experience of emotion is to our experience of existence itself. 

Emotions and feelings color wheel from a study of the most common associations between emotions and colors

Since energy behavior is fundamental to the formation of physical matter, it’s conceivable that sensations could occur without physicality. After all, sensations and emotions are just interpretations of energy phenomena.

Modern physics gives us major clues into how existence outside of our 3D reality and perception of linear time could be occurring. Since time is a dimension, being relative to the observer, there is no single time or sequence of time that is special, or central, to existence.

Even more compelling is the fact that energy is never destroyed, only transformed, meaning that it is technically possible to access any point within spacetime, including those from the past and future from our perspective.

More Near-Death Experiences:

References

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Tim Newman, Out-of-body experiences: Neuroscience or the paranormal?, Medical News Today, July 19, 2017.

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Christophe Lopez, Maya Elzière, Out-of-body experience in vestibular disorders – A prospective study of 210 patients with dizziness, Cortex, Volume 104, 2018, Pages 193-206, ISSN 0010-9452.

Brant Clark, Ph.D., Captain Ashton Graybiel, MC, USN,  The Break-off Phenomenon: A Feeling of Separation from the Earth Experienced by Pilots at High Altitude, The Journal of Aviation Medicine, Volume 28, Number 2, April 1957.

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