What is known is that people who have a large number of paranormal experiences, such as NDEs, also have a higher incidence of anomalous temporal-lobe functioning. "Not abnormal," insists Vernon Neppe, M.D., director of the division of neuropsychiatry at the University of Washington, who developed a set of questions designed to stimulate the temporal lobe of the brain. "Just different. If you stimulate certain areas of the temporal lobe, you'll get certain reactions. And those subjects with some paranormal experience will react differently."
The finding suggests that some people have a pattern of brain functioning that allows them to experience NDEs. But it does not indicate whether or not these experiences are transcendental--that is, whether the event is a journey into afterlife or a blip in the firing of brain cells. If a spiritual journey occurs entirely in the brain, however, does that make it any less a transformative phenomenon?
Other researchers have attempted to explore whether actually being near death is essential to experience an NDE. Ian Stevenson? M.D., and Justine Owens, Ph.D., of the University of Virginia's Institute for Personality Studies, wondered whether some of those reporting NDEs--and all of their characteristic traits--were not actually near death at the time of their experience, but simply believed they were? Surely, they argued, someone who wasn't really dying couldn't transcend into an afterlife, and therefore their experience couldn't be "real."
Stevenson studied the medical records of 40 patients who had reported NDEs, and found that more than half were not close to death at all. He suggested that "the belief of being about to die had been the principal precipitant of their experiences"(Omega, Vol. 20, 1989-90). In other words, a psychological reaction to trauma--what the teams calls "feardeath"--had sparked their NDE.
But Stevenson and Owens didn't stop there. They then interviewed 58 NDErs--30 of whom (52 percent) had not actually been near death (Lancet; Vol. 336). What they found startled them: A significantly greater number of patients who actually were near death reported elements of the core experience--including the bright light--than those who were not. Rather than supporting the psychological explanation, the results actually gave support to the transcendental interpretation. Those who were in a physical state wherein they might transcend into death appeared to do so; the others did not.
Still, whether near-death experiences are neurochemically induced hallucinations, psychological reactions to fear, or transcendental encounters may be moot. As one researcher puts it, in our search for firm answers we may be "overestimating the tether of mind to body."
Encounter-Prone Personalities
For Psychologist Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., author of The Omega Project (Morrow, 1992), research into NDEs began with a very down-to-earth approach. He wanted to determine whether there are any distinguishing features between people who remember and report paranormal encounters and those who do not.
He quickly discovered an extraordinary similarity in the backgrounds of those who had near-death experiences. There was, he says, "a consistent tendency for them to report a greater incidence of childhood abuse and trauma."
One common response to such trauma is dissociation--a psychological phenomenon in which a person separates from a reality that is too painful to process by conscious means, and retreats into a world of their own invention.
In fact, Ring acknowledges that those with histories of child abuse score higher on measures of dissociation, or even develop serious dissociative disorders such as multiple personality. (He cites reports of UFO abductions as possible examples of children dissociating, or "tuning out" from the reality of being abducted by a stranger and forced into an unfamiliar car.)
He sugggests that NDErs are dissociating from the trauma of being near death. But that, for him, does not invalidate the spiritual nature of the experience. Yes, these people are dissociating, he acknowledges, but he sees it as a pathway to another dimension.
"The ability to dissociate makes you more receptive to alternate realities," he explains. "You are dissociating in response to trauma, so you are more likely to register an NDE as a conscious event." By developing a dissociative response style as a psychological defense, you are more able to tune into other realities as well--becoming what Ring calls "an encounter-prone personality."
And that leads back to Barbara Harris, who had her own NDE--actually two experiences within a week--in 1975 A fall in a swimming pool exacerbated her congenital sclerosis and eventually left her in traction, lying immobile in a therapeutic contraption called a circle bed. When a breathing machine failed to allow her to exhale, Harris felt herself "being blown up like a balloon, and then . . . total blackness.
"Soon, I felt hands and arms around me, and then my grandmother's chest. I experienced myself through my grandmother. It was so much more than words; there was a perfect sharing between the two of us. The darkness was churning and I felt my hands expanding. I could hear a low, droning noise. All of a sudden I was back in my own body."
Afterward, regaining consciousness, she didn't tell anyone about her experience because, she says, "I didn't want to be sedated."
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