New Insights on Terminal Lucidity and Near-Death Experiences

In Alexander Batthyany’s new book, Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death, he asks the question, “Why is it at the decisive crossroads of death and dying, when the biological machinery of our brains ceases to function appropriately, we find that an active mental life is even possible"?¹ Batthyany refers to what happens in the Near Death Experience (NDE) and in Terminal Lucidity (TL), both of which can occur shortly before death and are associated with heightened, not diminished, mental alertness.

An NDE occurs when a person is close to death or pronounced dead. It is often triggered by a medical trauma such as a car accident, heart attack, etc. Typically, there is an out-of-body experience: The individual viewing themselves from above, traveling through a tunnel, seeing vivid imagery, encountering deceased family members, and bright lights, and perhaps perceiving angelic-like beings. The person is often told that it is not their time to die and returns to life.

Terminal lucidity occurs more often when someone who is close to death and has been uncommunicative and unresponsive—as in the late stages of dementia—becomes alert, lucid, and verbal at the end of their life. It is as though the old self has returned after all have assumed the “self” has been destroyed. Sadly, it is followed closely by death.

How are these things possible? They go against everything we know so far about death and dying, and yet these events are well documented.

It seems that initially when the near-death experiences were brought to the public’s attention, they were dismissed as delusions, wishful thinking, or simply lies. Professionals did not deem them worthy of research and criticized those who did.

Today, NDEs are more widely accepted as phenomena that can occur when someone is dying. With increased public and professional acceptance, people are more willing to share their experiences without fear of ridicule.

Recognition of terminal lucidity is still in its early stages; as with NDEs, there are skeptics. However, the volume of people coming forward about such experiences with a dying loved one has reached a point where it, too, cannot easily be dismissed.

Researchers have not found anything other than death that would be predictive that someone would experience TL. Neither clinical diagnosis, age, or gender seem to play a factor. In fact, TL has been observed in people with strokes, brain tumors, and different types of dementia.

The physiology of one case can have nothing to do with the others. Batthyany reports that the most frequently occurring TL is one in which the person is clear, coherent, and verbal. Other forms are less dramatic: People were clear and lucid but verbal communication was impaired or there was none.

Those who have experienced NDEs often also report having enhanced cognition. They report being able to think more clearly than before, all while those around them see the person as deceased. Batthyany refers to a study by E.W. Kelly from 2007 in which 80 percent of experiencers described their thinking as clearer than usual. He also cites J.E. Owens' 1990 work in which it appears that the more severe the physiological crisis the more likely the NDE-er is to report experiencing complex cognitive skills. That experience is internal, but with terminal lucidity, these changes in cognition are externally displayed.

In exploring these end-of-life experiences, many questions arise: Is the mind separate from the brain? Where was the former self during the time that the person was “away"? Was it hibernating or preserved somewhere? Do changes in neurochemical transmitters trigger the experience? What implications does this have for the treatment of Alzheimer's or dementia? Do both TL and NDE suggest that there may be more to us than our biological self? What can we learn from these experiences about consciousness? I cannot wait to see what secrets are revealed.

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