From within an ideational culture (see last post) the testimony of those with near-death experiences is not at all astonishing but, on the contrary, supports the general belief that we are going somewhere after life’s travails. Let’s examine the experience now without the interfering business of having continuously to make the case for an independent soul. The first aspect of NDEs I find worth noting is that these states usually have two phases, each with interesting implications. One is a “this-worldly” and the second an “other-worldly” aspect. I want to look at the first phase today.
The subject, let’s call her Mary, first experiences her own awareness outside of her body. She sees the hospital bed, the operating room, or the scene of an accident—the situation, in other words, where something decides that she is now on her own. Her perceptions are sharp and clear. Not only does she see, she also hears, and her mind is working quite normally. Mary may very well, if she is average, later relate that her thinking was sharper than ever in ordinary life. What she hears is the noises in the environment and the talk of the doctors, nurses, or attending relatives.
This consciousness of the ordinary world becomes an important aspect of the evidentiary character of NDEs. What she sees and hears can be pinned down in time and then examined in light of the medical observations recorded at the same time. If Mary was comatose at the moment of a particular observation—when the doctor, for example, called for electric shock to restart the heart—if Mary’s brain was no longer functioning at the moment—and if, of course, all the while her eyes were shut—how then could she see, hear, understand, and also form very accurate memories? One logical explanation of such data is that consciousness can operate without our sensory apparatus and the information gained (however it is gained) can be understood and also remembered outside of a bodily frame of reference.
Some subjects also report that they made attempts to communicate with doctors, nurses, or family members in attendance—usually to assure them that all was well. Mary, after all, was still there and feeling no pain. Notably, these attempts invariably fail. Others present at the scene are keenly aware of Mary’s presence as a body in distress; but they are entirely unconscious of Mary as a communicating self. She is neither seen nor heard—although she sees and hears.
Let’s give this a clear conceptual formulation. Those in bodies can see and manipulate the physical dimension but cannot perceive anything beyond it. Those outside of bodies can perceive the physical dimension but cannot act on it without a body. The physical, therefore, is accessible in a limited way from a spiritual order (to give it a name), an order where Mary now temporarily finds herself. The very character of her current situation—comatose, etc.—seems to enable her to perceive the physical in a new way but also prevents her from acting upon it. She is communicating, or trying to do so, but she cannot induce her brain to move her vocal chords in order to set up air vibrations that doctors and nurses can pick up with ears and then decode. They, in turn, encased in bodies and tuned in to sensory inputs entirely, cannot perceive Mary and understand her communication in what appears to be a much more subtle medium. It may be, indeed, that they do hear her at some level; that, at least, seems sensible to me. But it must be that the sensory “noise” is so greatly distracting that the more subtle message, from Mary, does not register sufficiently to reach the agent at the center of that bodily structure. It would seem that the subtle message should be more easily heard: it is closer to the true nature of the agent doing the understanding. This, however, is not what happens—and that fact, alone, may be an interesting indicator either of the “problem” or of the “purpose” of embodiment: separation from something higher.
What the NDE appears to show is that the soul is independent of the body. It throws off the body when it appears to be beyond repair. Outside the body the self appears to be in a different environment but one which seems to permeate the physical without directly influencing it. In the body, however, the self appears to be captured. Other paranormal evidence—and instances from the lives of saints and highly accomplished seers and such—would seem to indicate that this state of “capture” is by no means absolute, that it can be mitigated. But I’ll get to that some other time, God willing and the crick don’t rise. Here I will finish with the notation that all manner of interesting philosophical questions and metaphysical speculations arise from the mere observation Mary and her brothers, sisters report from near-encounters with death. Are we meant to be in bodies? Does an Aristotelian-Thomistic hierarchical arrangement of reality make sense? Are we here voluntarily? Is the sojourn in bodies a kind of training? Much to ponder.
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