How Near-death Experiences Work

A near-death experience is a phenomenon in which people who are close to death report a range of unusual and often profound sensations, such as out-of-body experiences or encounters with light. These experiences can vary widely but typically involve a sense of transcending the boundaries of ordinary consciousness during a life-threatening situation.

­­Dr. Raymond Moody coined the term "near-death experience" in his 1975 book, "Life After Life." Many credit Moody's work with bringing th­e concept of the near-death experience to the public's attention, but reports of such experiences have occurred throughout history.

Plato's "Republic," written in 360 B.C.E., contains the tale of a Greek soldier named Er who had an NDE after being killed in battle. Er described his soul leaving his body, being judged along with o­ther souls and seeing heaven [ref].

While there are many questions about NDEs, one thing is certain: They do happen. Thousands of people have perceived similar sensations while close to death. The debate is over whether or not they actually experienced what they perceived.

While many NDEs exhibit shared characteristics, not all of them encompass every trait. Here are the traits that "typical" NDEs share:

Out-of-Body Experiences vs. Near-death Experiences

Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are sometimes grouped together, but there are key differences. An OBE can be a component of an NDE, but some people experience OBEs in circumstances that have nothing to do with death or dying.

They can happen spontaneously or be induced intentionally through techniques such as meditation, lucid dreaming or during extreme situations like trauma, sleep paralysis or near-death experiences. They are not limited to specific circumstances but may occur under various conditions or states of consciousness.

Some NDEs have elements that bear little resemblance to the "typical" near-death experience. Anywhere from 1 percent (according to a 1982 Gallup poll) to 25 percent (according to some researchers) of subjects do not experience feelings of peace, nor do they visit heaven or meet friendly spirits.

Instead, they feel terrified and are accosted by demons or malicious imps. They may visit places that fit biblical descriptions of hell, including lakes of fire, tormented souls and a general feeling of oppressive heat.

There have been a few reports of shared NDEs, in which someone connected to the dying person accompanies them on their out-of-body journey. This might take the form of a dream that occurs at the same time that the subject was near death.

Children have also been the subjects of NDEs. Very young children tend to report surreal experiences that have common NDE elements. As children get older, their NDEs may be colored with more spiritual connotations, such as meeting God or Jesus, if they've received any religious education.

A small percentage of NDE subjects report a prophetic vision that reveals to them the fate of Earth and humanity. This is generally an apocalyptic vision showing the end times, but some report visions of humanity evolving into higher beings. One group of subjects, unknown to each other, reported that the world would end in 1988 [ref].

In 1982, pollster George Gallup, Jr. and author William Proctor released "Adventures in Immortality," a book about NDEs based on two Gallup polls specifica­lly addressing near-death and belief in the afterlife. This poll remains the most widely used source for statistics about NDEs.

Gallup and Proctor found that 15 percent of all Americans who had been in near-death situations reported having NDEs. Of those, 9 percent included a "classic out-of-body experience," while 11 percent included entering another realm or dimension and 8 percent featured the presence of spiritual beings.

Only 1 percent reported negative NDEs. But these numbers are more than 40 years old, and other researchers, whose studies are usually on a smaller scale, report statistics on NDEs that can vary widely from the 1982 poll.

There have been dozen of studies on the subject since, including a 2017 study from the University of Virginia that offered some compelling findings. Researchers set out to determine whether NDEs were genuine or just imagined. They surveyed 122 people who had experienced NDEs, asking them to rate the characteristics of their memories related to three different types of events: the NDE itself, a real event that happened around the same time and an event they had only imagined.

The results showed that the memories of NDEs scored the highest on the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire, indicating that these memories were perceived as more "real" than both actual and imagined events. This suggests that NDEs are remembered as more vivid and genuine experiences than things that actually occurred or were imagined.

Post-NDE Quality of Life

Other research has focused on the effect an NDE has on the subject's life. Kenneth Ring, one of the most prolific researchers and authors of NDE studies, reports a large number of subjects who gain self-confidence and become more extroverted after an experience.

One of Ring's studies quantified changes in subjects' attitudes toward life. These generally include a sense of purpose in life, an appreciation of life, an increase in compassion, patience and understanding and an overall feeling of personal strength.

A small percentage of subjects reported feelings of fear, depression and a focus on death. Ring also found that NDE subjects tend to feel a heightened sense of religious feeling and belief in a spiritual world. However, he notes that this does not necessarily translate into an increase in church attendance — it is more of an internal, personal increase in religious and spiritual feelings.

Finally, people who go through NDEs often find that they do not fear death, and feel that a positive experience will be awaiting them when they actually die.

Let's examine the theories that seek to explain near-death experiences, which fall into two basic categories: scientific­ explanations (including medical, physiological and psychological) and supernatural explanations (including spiritual and religious).

Of course, these explanations can be neither proven nor disproven. Acceptance of supernatural explanations is based on faith, spiritual and cultural background.

The most basic supernatural explanation is that someone who goes through an NDE is actually experiencing and remembering things that happen to their disembodied consciousness. When they are near death, their soul leaves their body, and they begin to perceive things that they normally cannot. The soul goes through the border between our world and the afterlife, usually represented by a tunnel with a light at the end.

While on this journey, the soul encounters other spiritual entities (souls) and may even encounter a divine entity, which many subjects perceive as God. They are offered a glimpse into another realm of being, often thought to be heaven, but they are then pulled back — or choose to go back — into their earthly body.

Astral Projections

Belief in astral projection connects NDEs with other forms of out-of-body experiences. Astral projection is the ability of an "astral self" to travel outside the body.

In an NDE, this astral self, or soul, spontaneously leaves the body and travels freely to other places. A few cases of NDEs seem to offer proof that people actually experienced events from a point of view different from that of their earthly body.

People who were unconscious, nonresponsive, had their eyes closed or had been declared clinically dead have reported details of procedures done to them and people who were present in the room. Some NDE subjects with congenital blindness have reportedly been able to identify the color of a doctor's shirt, for example.

Psychic Connections

Other NDE theories are a bit more esoteric. Some believe that an NDE represents a psychic connection to higher-level intelligent beings from another dimension. These beings may be humans who have evolved their souls beyond the birth-death-reincarnation cycle, thus offering a glimpse of humanity's future as high-order spiritual beings.

Sometimes, an NDE can even offer a literal view into the future, like apocalypse prophecy NDEs.

Religious Theories

For those with a strong belief in Judeo-Christian theology, NDEs represent proof that we have souls, that they continue to exist after we die and that heaven and hell are real places. Some believe that NDEs are the work of Satan, who seeks to exploit people's vulnerability at the time by appearing as "an angel of light." His ultimate reason for this deception is unclear.

It is interesting to note that non-Judeo-Christian religions have stories and descriptions of death that seem to explain many of the common NDE traits. Buddhism, for example, describes "the clear light of death," as well as demonic embodiments of moral failure.

The soul's goal is to recognize both the light and the apparitions as projections of the soul's own nature, not something objectively real. If that happens, the soul may escape the birth-death-reincarnation cycle and reach nirvana.

­Science cannot ultimately explain why some people have near-death experiences. That's not to say that current scientific explanations are incorrect, but NDEs are complex, subjective and emotionally charged.

Further, testing presents major challenges. Scientists can't purposely take someone to the brink of death and then resuscitate them in a lab to test their out-of-body perception. Alternately, there's no test to determine if someone actually visited heaven and met God.

Nevertheless, medical science offers compelling evidence that many aspects of NDEs are physiological and psychological in nature. Scientists have found that the drugs ketamine and PCP can create sensations in users that are nearly identical to many NDEs. In fact, some users think they are actually dying while on the drug [ref].

The mechanism behind some of these strange experiences is in the way our brains process sensory information. What we see as "reality" around us is only the sum of all the sensory information our brain is receiving at any given moment.

When you look at a computer or phone screen, the light from the screen hits your retinas and sends information to the appropriate areas of the brain to interpret the light patterns as something meaningful: in this case, the words you are currently reading.

An even more complex system of nerves and muscle fibers allows your brain to know where your body is in relation to the space around it. Close your eyes and raise your right hand until it is level with the top of your head. How do you know where your hand is without looking at it? This sensory system allows you to know where your hand is even when your eyes are closed.

Trauma Response

Trauma affecting functional areas of the brain, such as the somatosensory and visual cortexes, could cause hallucinations that get interpreted as NDEs.

Imagine that all your senses are malfunctioning. Instead of real sensory input from the world around you, your brain is receiving faulty information, possibly because of drugs, or some form of trauma that is causing your brain to shut down.

What you perceive as a real experience is actually your brain trying to interpret this information. Some have theorized that "neural noise," or an overload of information sent to the brain's visual cortex, creates an image of a bright light that gradually grows larger. The brain may interpret this as moving down a dark tunnel.

The body's spatial sense is prone to malfunction during a near-death experience as well. Again, your brain interprets faulty information about where the body is in relation to the space around it. The result is the sensation of leaving the body and flying around the room.

Combined with other effects of trauma and oxygen deprivation in the brain (a symptom in many near-death situations), this leads to the overall experience of floating into space while looking down at your own body, and then leaving to float down a tunnel.

Coping Mechanism

The peaceful, calm sensation felt during NDEs may be a coping mechanism triggered by increased levels of endorphins produced in the brain during trauma. Many people experience a strange sense of detachment and a lack of emotional response during traumatic events (whether or not they were related to a near-death experience). This is the same effect.

NDEs that include visits to heaven or meetings with God could involve a combination of several factors. Faulty sensory input, oxygen deprivation and endorphin-induced euphoria create a surreal, though realistic, experience.

When the subject recalls the encounter later, it has passed through the filter of his conscious mind. Bizarre experiences that seem unexplainable become spirit beings, other dimensions and conversations with God.

The experiences of people whose out-of-body adventures allow them to see and hear events that their unconscious body shouldn't be able to perceive are more difficult to explain. However, it is plausible that unconscious people can still register sensory cues and prior knowledge and incorporate them into their NDE. Whether this is more plausible than the subject's soul floating out of their body is a matter of personal opinion.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of all the possible explanations for an NDE. This phenomenon seems to offer some hope that death is not necessarily something to be feared, nor is it the end of consciousness.

Even science has a difficult time grasping death: The medical community has struggled with specific definitions for clinical death, organ death and brain death for decades. For every aspect of an NDE, there is at least one scientific explanation for it. And for every scientific explanation, there seem to be five NDE cases that defy it.

This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.