The Art of Dying

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He has had a longstanding interest in brain function, the relationship of the mind and the brain, and the “problem” of consciousness. He has an extensive research record and has published over 240 papers in medical and scientific journals on brain function and also several books. I don’t have space to cover all the research and all the ways that alternative explanations have been ruled out. If you’d like to read more, please consult the sources I mention. I’d like to turn to the issue of animals in DBVs. Do Animals Appear in DBVs? Animals appear in DBVs. This is confirmed by multiple researchers in the DBV space, and it is testified to by a range of specific reports. People of The Horizon Research Foundation". Horizon Research Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 November 2011 . Retrieved 18 April 2012.

Bhugra, Dinesh (1997). Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-16512-9. That is all I want to say about retrospective studies, so let me turn now to the cutting edge of NDE research. This is a new and very exciting developing area: prospective studies. Just to remind you, these are studies in which the researcher begins studying the participants before they have their NDEs, and thus has information about the circumstances in which the near-death experience occurs and can start to ask focused scientific questions about it. Michael O'Brien. (2003). "The Day I Died". British Medical Journal. 326(7383): 288. Retrieved 2014-06-03.

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I had taken an overdose of aspirin and alcohol and had been pumped out at the hospital. It was late at night and I was put into a ward. I don’t know whether you would call this an NDE but at the same time my spirit was so low I felt that I could die if I really wanted to. It could perhaps be classed as a case of broken spirit if there is such a thing. I want now particularly to mention van Lommel’s Dutch study (van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, and Elfferich, 2001). This was a huge study, with 344 cardiac arrest survivors in 10 hospitals. Forty-one survivors reported NDEs. The occurrence of NDEs was not influenced by the duration of either unconsciousness or cardiac arrest, or by medication. So that is really interesting: you do not have to be unconscious for long, but there may be a critical limit; we do not know. More NDEs were reported in the group of survivors who actually died shortly after their experience, so it looks as though the closer you are to death, the more likely you are to get an NDE. Animals can’t tell us what is happening as they approach death. Rover can’t say, “I see my old pal Fido in the corner. He has come to get me.” So we have to rely on observation and inference, which are subject to error. Still, here are a couple of suggestive cases. In any case, Dr. Kerr, a careful researcher, found that dying people did see animals and pets in DBVs. You can learn more about his research here: Will we ever really know? Perhaps, but let me end with a Zen parable. A nobleman asked Master Hakuin, ‘‘What happens to the enlightened man at death?’’

You probably know that a large number of astronauts had transcendent experiences. Edgar Mitchell is one (Mitchell and Williams, 1996). But the astronauts who were in control of the capsule did not have these experiences because they were busy with calculations and responsibilities. It was the guys that could stare out of the windows, who were not doing so much, who had the luxury of contemplation, who had transcendent experiences. And, again, if you talk to Mitchell, he will tell you quite simply that the universe is a universe of consciousness and love. Goswami’s ideas go along with this, but the challenge is in formalizing these observations so that they can, in fact, be used by science. Question: In childbirth, people are not dying, so why do they have NDEs? When she saw Gigi, the mother changed her mind. She took the father’s hand and agreed to go. Rob said that it wasn’t until the dog made an appearance that his mother was willing to cross. She died the next morning. So although the ketamine model is the best scientific candidate so far to account for the NDE in cardiac arrest, it cannot explain every feature of NDEs. And I am not sure that even if we say that the NDE is a ketamine-like experience, we can, in fact, completely understand the whole of the NDE during cardiac arrest. Because we are left with the problem of exactly when does the NDE occur? And the only way you can get an answer to this is through out-of-body experiences (OBEs). A 7-year-old girl described having an experience in the pediatric intensive care unit of St. Mary’s Hospital. She described feeling very calm and peaceful, clearly the beginnings of a near-death experience. She was observing herself from the end of the bed, and, again, she was standing next to a boy whom she did not know.

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Parnia S, et al. AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation—A prospective study. Resuscitation, Vol. 85, Issue 12, P 1799-1805, December 01, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.09.004 In 1999, the British Psychological Society, the main academic psychological institution in the U.K., started a section on transpersonal (spiritual) psychology. And in the year 2000, a number of us were able to persuade the Royal College of Psychiatrists to bring in a special interest group in spiritual psychiatry. That group has been growing the fastest of any special interest group: 800 psychiatrists in the U.K. have joined the section in less than four years. Britton, W. B., and Bootzin, R. R. (2004). Near-death experiences and the temporal lobe. Psychological Science, 15, 254–258. I have been given other accounts which are very similar to that. Here is one from a woman whose husband was dying: