My (very) little NDE

 When I was about 9 years old I had what is now called a near-death experience or NDE and, although it was not deep or profound, it did have some long-lasting effects.

There has been a substantial increase in interest in NDEs since those days and that has inspired me to share my story and to say a couple of things about the phenomenon, as a psychologist who has studied NDEs for a number of years.

For those not familiar, as the name suggests they are experiences that usually happen when someone is close to death but who then recovers and describes the experiences they had during that time. Common features of such experiences include:

    • Changes in the sense of time, either speeded up or having feelings of timelessness

    • Changes in understanding about their own life or life more widely

    • Intense feelings of peace and/or joy

    • Vivid sensations and being surrounded by light

    • A feeling of leaving their body and becoming aware of things happening elsewhere, maybe even on the other side of the world

    • Encountering deceased friends and family or mystical beings

    • A life review, in which they evaluate episodes from their life

    • Either seeing a tunnel of light or going through one

    • And they often end when someone or something sends them back to their physical body.

Other experiences are possible but these are probably the most common.

The background to my own NDE was going on a family holiday to Scarborough in northeast England when I was about 9 years old. One day we visited an open air swimming pool – I was very excited, got changed quickly and discovered that the pool had a slide!

    • I went down the slide into the swimming pool, although I couldn’t swim, and then discovered it was the deep end of the pool!

    • I panicked, struggled, sank below the surface and started choking. But then I suddenly found myself in a state of calm and deep peace.

    • I also went from seeing the murky pool water to becoming aware of being surrounded by a pure, white light. It all felt amazing and really pleasant.

    • And time stopped – I felt suspended in a timeless place. So I just don’t know how long it lasted.

    • I came back to the physical world again only as I was being dragged out of the pool by adults who had seen me drowning. 

    • And then I had to face my parents...

Although not a profound NDE (it only scored 9 points on Greyson’s NDE scale, which goes up to 32 points), it did lead to a couple of the things such experiences often do:

    • It expanded my view about what life is and what can happen, although I couldn’t put it into words at the time. At that age I just thought this is how things are!

    • It also led me into further research and exploration of these and related topics, albeit many years later.

    • I also lost my fear of water and, in fact, always felt embraced as if by a benevolent presence when submerged. Perhaps it was a factor in my choosing to do scuba diving for over 40 years – who knows!

However, it didn’t lead to the kind of profound life transformations that the deeper NDE experiences usually do, such as losing the fear of death or changing one’s spiritual beliefs. 

Looking at the research overall, I’m left with a couple of key ideas:

    • Such experiences are not hallucinations, as some sceptics say they are.

    • Instead, I suggest that the evidence supports the idea that what we call death can be looked on more as a transition of consciousness from this material world to a non-material afterlife, rather than as a final ending of consciousness. 

I’ve put links to research studies and reviews below. If you have never had an NDE or similar (although about 4 or 5% of the adult population worldwide say they have), I do recommend having a look at those links, not just because it is an interesting phenomenon that strongly suggests there may be a life after the moment we call death, but because it can help people decide what is really important in how to live life now.

One of the commonest messages from people who have had a deep NDE, is that it’s the small acts of kindness and helping others that matter most in life. in 1980 I went to a talk in Vancouver given by HH the Dalai Lama (not about NDEs by the way) and he ended his talk by saying something like, “Try to be a bit kinder. Every day try to be a bit kinder.” I think that sums up the main take home message of NDE experiencers very nicely...

Thank you for reading.

Links and reading suggestions

    • The Bigelow essay prize winners (scroll down the following web page) https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/essay-contest/ 

    • ‘Life at Death’, a book of Dr. Kenneth Ring’s research into NDEs up to 2013.

    • ‘Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience’, a book by Professor Pim van Lommel, published in 2010. N.B. Prof. Van Lommel is also one of the major prize winners in the Bigelow essay contest, mentioned above.

    • ‘Evidence of the Afterlife’, Dr. Jeffrey Long’s recent large-scale study, which he describes in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbUygeX2UkU&list=WL&index=16&t=314s