Researchers from the University of Virginia have found there is consistencies with various near death experiences over five decades which suggests there is some truth behind the phenomenons. NDEs are when a person come close to death, and believes they experience ‘life after death’. This can includes visions of a religious figure or a deceased person, and even out of body perceptions.
By analysing reports of NDEs fro mover 50 years, experts at the University of Virginia found that several characteristics emerge following an NDE.
After an NDE, people tend to have a decline in a fear of death and less interest in material funtions.
They also tend to be less competitive and less interested in their personal status.
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Bruce Greyson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, also said the seems to be an increase in brain activity during an NDE, which “suggests that the mind is not what the brain does.”
Dr Greyson also said people who have NDEs believe it is “realer than real”.
He said: “We asked people who had come close to death to rate their memories of the event, and also of real events which had happened around the same time.
“What we found, for those people who had NDEs, the near death experience was remembered with more clarity and detail, more context and more intense feelings than real events around the same time period.
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Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, told a recent Oz Talk: “People describe a sensation of a bright, warm, welcoming light that draws people towards it.
“They describe a sensation of experiencing their deceased relatives, almost as if they have come to welcome them.
“They often say that they didn’t want to come back in many cases, it is so comfortable and it is like a magnet that draws them that they don’t want to come back.
“A lot of people describe a sensation of separating from themselves and watching doctors and nurses working on them.”
Dr Parnia said there are scientific explanations for the reaction, and says seeing people is not evidence of the afterlife, but more likely the brain just scanning itself as a survival technique.
He said thanks to modern technology and science “death does not have to be limited to philosophy and religion, but it can be explored through science”.
He added: “They can hear things and record all conversations that are going on around them.”