WE HAVE BECOME very familiar now in the West with the near-death experience, the name given to the range of experiences reported by people who have survived an incident of near or clinical death. The near-death experience has been reported throughout history, in all mystical and shamanic traditions, and by writers and philosophers as varied as Plato, Pope Gregory the Great, some of the great Sufi masters, Tolstoy, and Jung. My favorite example from history is the story told by a great English historian, the monk Bede, in the eighth century:
About this time, a noteworthy miracle, like those of olden days, occurred in Britain. For, in order to arouse the living from spiritual death, a man already dead returned to bodily life and related many notable things that he had seen, some of which I have thought it valuable to mention here in brief. There was a head of a family living in a place in the country of the Northumbrians known as Cunningham, who led a devout life with all his household. He fell ill and grew steadily worse until the crisis came, and in the early hours of one night he died. But at daybreak he returned to life and suddenly sat up to the great consternation of those weeping around the body, who ran away; only his wife, who loved him more dearly, remained with him, though trembling and fearful. The man reassured her and said: “Do not be frightened; for I have truly risen from the grasp of death, and I am allowed to live among men again. But henceforth I must not live as I used to, and must adopt a very different way of life” . . . Not long afterward, he abandoned all worldly responsibilities and entered the monastery of Melrose . . .
This was the account he used to give of his experience: “A handsome man in a shining robe was my guide, and we walked in silence in what appeared to be a northeasterly direction. As we traveled onward, we came to a very broad and deep valley of infinite length . . . He soon brought me out of darkness into an atmosphere of clear light, and as he led me forward in bright light, I saw before us a tremendous wall which seemed to be of infinite length and height in all directions. As I could see no gate, window, or entrance in it, I began to wonder why we went up to the wall. But when we reached it, all at once—I know not by what means—we were on top of it. Within lay a very broad and pleasant meadow . . . Such was the light flooding all this place that it seemed greater than the brightness of daylight or of the sun’s rays at noon . . .
“(The guide said) ‘You must now return to your body and live among men once more; but, if you will weigh your actions with greater care and study to keep your words and ways virtuous and simple, then when you die, you too will win a home among these happy spirits that you see. For, when I left you for a while, I did so in order to discover what your future would be.’ When he told me this I was most reluctant to return to my body; for I was entranced by the pleasantness and beauty of the place I could see and the company I saw there. But I did not dare to question my guide, and meanwhile, I know not how, I suddenly found myself alive among men once more.”
Bede ends his account with these words:
This man of God would not discuss these and other things he had seen with any apathetic or careless-living people, but only with those who were . . . willing to take his words to heart and grow in holiness.1
The skill of modern medical technology has added a new and exciting dimension to the extent of the near-death experience; many people have now been revived from “death,” for example, after accidents, heart attack, or serious illness, or in operations or combat. The near-death experience has been the subject of a great deal of scientific research and philosophical speculation. According to an authoritative 1982 Gallup poll, an extraordinary number of Americans—up to 8 million, or one in twenty in the population—have had at least one near-death experience.2
Although no two people have exactly the same experience, just as no two people could have identical experiences of the bardos, a common pattern of different phases in the near-death experience, a “core experience,” appears:
1. They experience an altered state of feeling, of peace and well-being, without pain, bodily sensations, or fear.
2. They may be aware of a buzzing or rushing sound, and find themselves separated from their body. This is the so-called “out-of-the-body experience”: They can view the body, often from a point somewhere above it; their sense of sight and hearing is heightened; their consciousness is clear and vividly alert, and they can even move through walls.
3. They are aware of another reality, of entering a darkness, floating in a dimensionless space, and then moving rapidly through a tunnel.
4. They see a light, at first a point in the distance, and are magnetically drawn toward it and then enveloped in light and love. This light is described as a blinding light of great beauty, but the eyes are unhurt by it. Some people report meeting “a being of light,” a luminous, seemingly omniscient presence that a few call God or Christ, who is compassionate and loving. Sometimes in this presence they may witness a life-review, seeing everything they have done in their life, good and bad. They communicate telepathically with the presence, and find themselves in a timeless and usually blissful dimension in which all ordinary concepts like time and space are meaningless. Even if the experience lasts only one or two minutes in normal time, it can be of a vast elaboration and richness.
5. Some see an inner world of preternatural beauty, paradisal landscapes and buildings, with heavenly music, and they have a feeling of oneness. A very few, it seems, report terrifying visions of hellish realms.
6. They may reach a boundary beyond which they cannot go; some meet dead relatives and friends and talk to them. They decide (often reluctantly) or are told to return to the body and this life, sometimes with a sense of mission and service, sometimes to protect and care for their family, sometimes simply to fulfill the purpose of their life, which has not been accomplished.
The most important aspect of the near-death experience, as reported again and again in the literature about it, is the complete transformation it often makes in the lives, attitudes, careers, and relationships of the people who have this experience. They may not lose their fear of pain and dying, but they lose their fear of death itself; they become more tolerant and loving; and they become interested in spiritual values, the “path of wisdom,” and usually in a universal spirituality rather than the dogma of any one religion.
How, then, should the near-death experience be interpreted? Some Western writers who have read the Tibetan Book of the Dead equate these experiences with the experiences of the bardos taught in the Tibetan tradition. At first glance there do seem to be tantalizing parallels between the two, but how exactly do the details of the near-death experience relate to the teachings on the bardos? I feel that this would require a special study beyond the scope of this book, but there are a number of similarities and differences we can see.
The final phase of the dissolution process of the bardo of dying, you will remember, is when the black experience of “full attainment” dawns “like an empty sky shrouded in utter darkness.” At this point, the teachings speak of a moment of bliss and joy. One of the main features of the near-death experience is the impression of moving “at a terrific speed” and “feeling weightless” through a black space, “a total, peaceful, wonderful blackness,” and down a “long, dark, tunnel.”
One woman told Kenneth Ring: “It’s just like a void, a nothing and it’s such a peaceful—it’s so pleasant that you can keep going. It’s a complete blackness, there is no sensation at all, there was no feeling . . . sort of like a dark tunnel. Just a floating. It’s like being in mid-air.”3
And another woman told him:
The first thing I remember was a tremendous rushing sound, a tremendous . . . It’s hard to find the right words to describe. The closest thing that I could possibly associate it with is, possibly, the sound of a tornado—a tremendous gushing wind, but almost pulling me. And I was being pulled into a narrow point from a wide area.4
A woman told Margot Grey:
I was in what felt like outer space. It was absolutely black out there and I felt like I was being drawn towards an opening like at the end of a tunnel. I knew this because I could see a light at the end; that’s how I knew it was there. I was vertical and I was being drawn towards the opening. I know it wasn’t a dream, dreams don’t happen that way. I never once imagined it was a dream.5
At the moment of death, the Ground Luminosity or Clear Light dawns in all its splendor. The Tibetan Book of the Dead says: “O son/daughter of an enlightened family . . . your Rigpa is inseparable luminosity and emptiness and dwells as a great expanse of light; beyond birth or death, it is, in fact, the Buddha of Unchanging Light.”
Melvin Morse, who has specialized in the research of near-death experiences in children, remarks: “Nearly every near-death experience of children (and about one-fourth of those of adults) has in it an element of light. They all report that the light appears at the final stages of the near-death experience, after they have had an out-of-body experience or have travelled up the tunnel.”6
One of the best descriptions of the approach to the light was reported by Margot Grey:
Then gradually you realize that way, far off in the distance, an unmeasurable distance, you may be reaching the end of the tunnel, as you can see a white light, but it’s so far away I can only compare it to looking up into the sky and in the distance seeing a single star, but visually you must remember that you are looking through a tunnel, and this light would fill the end of the tunnel. You concentrate on this speck of light because as you are propelled forward you anticipate reaching this light.
Gradually, as you travel towards it at an extreme speed it gets larger and larger. The whole process on reflection only seems to take about one minute. As you gradually draw nearer to this extremely brilliant light there is no sensation of an abrupt end of the tunnel, but rather more of a merging into the light. By now, the tunnel is behind you and before you is this magnificent, beautiful blue-white light. The brilliance is so bright, brighter than a light that would immediately blind you, but absolutely does not hurt your eyes at all.7
Many near-death experiencers describe the light itself:
My description of the light was—well, it was not a light, but the absence of darkness, total and complete . . . Well, you think of light as a big light shining on things making shadows and so forth. This light was really the absence of darkness. We’re not used to that concept because we always get a shadow from the light unless the light is all around us. But this light was so total and complete that you didn’t look at the light, you were in the light.8
One person told Kenneth Ring, “It was not bright. It was like a shaded lamp or something. But it wasn’t that kind of light that you get from a lamp. You know what it was? Like someone had put a shade over the sun. It made me feel very, very peaceful. I was no longer afraid. Everything was going to be all right.”9
A woman told Margot Grey: “The light is brighter than anything you could possibly imagine. There are no words to describe it. I was so happy, it’s impossible to explain. It was such a feeling of serenity, it was a marvelous feeling. The light is so bright that it would normally blind you, but it doesn’t hurt one’s eyes a bit.”
Others recount how they not only see the light, but enter directly into the light, and they speak of the feelings they have: “I had no sense of separate identity. I was the light and one with it.”10
A woman who had undergone two major operations in two days told Margot Grey: “Only my essence was felt. Time no longer mattered and space was filled with bliss. I was bathed in radiant light and immersed in the aura of the rainbow. All was fusion. Sounds were of a new order, harmonious, nameless (now I call it music).”11
Another man who reached this point of entering the light describes it in this way:
The following series of events appear to happen simultaneously, but in describing them I will have to take them one at a time. The sensation is of a being of some kind, more a kind of energy, not a character in the sense of another person, but an intelligence with whom it is possible to communicate. Also, in size it just covers the entire vista before you. It totally engulfs everything, you feel enveloped.
The light immediately communicates to you, in an instant telekinesis your thought waves are read, regardless of language. A doubtful statement would be impossible to receive. The first message I received was “Relax, everything is beautiful, everything is okay, you have nothing to fear.” I was immediately put at absolute ease. In the past if someone like a doctor had said “It’s okay, you have nothing to fear, this won’t hurt,” it usually did—you couldn’t trust them.
But this was the most beautiful feeling I have ever known, it’s absolute pure love. Every feeling, every emotion is just perfect. You feel warm, but it has nothing to do with temperature. Everything there is absolutely vivid and clear. What the light communicates to you is a feeling of true, pure love. You experience this for the first time ever. You can’t compare it to the love of your wife, or the love of your children or sexual love. Even if all those things were combined, you cannot compare it to the feeling you get from this light.12
A man who had almost drowned at the age of fourteen recalled:
As I reached the source of the Light, I could see in. I cannot begin to describe in human terms the feelings I had over what I saw. It was a giant infinite world of calm, and love, and energy, and beauty. It was as though human life was unimportant compared to this. And yet it urged the importance of life at the same time as it solicited death as a means to a different and better life. It was all being, all beauty, all meaning for all existence. It was all the energy of the universe forever in one place.13
Melvin Morse has written movingly of the near-death experiences of children, and tells how they describe the light in their simple eloquence: “I have a wonderful secret to tell you. I have been climbing a staircase to heaven.” “I just wanted to get to that Light. Forget my body, forget everything. I just wanted to get to that Light.” “There was a beautiful Light that had everything good in it. For about a week, I could see sparks of that Light in everything.” “When I came out of the coma in the hospital, I opened my eyes and saw pieces of the Light everywhere. I could see how everything in the world fits together.”14
In the near-death experience, the mind is momentarily released from the body, and goes through a number of experiences akin to those of the mental body in the bardo of becoming.
1. Out-of-Body Experience
The near-death experience very often begins with an out-of-body experience: people can see their own body, as well as the environment around them. This coincides with what has already been said about the Tibetan Book of the Dead:
“I remember coming round from the anesthetic and then drifting off and finding myself out of my body, over the bed looking down at my carcass. I was aware only of being a brain and eyes, I do not remember having a body.”15
A man who had suffered a heart attack told Kenneth Ring: “It seemed like I was up there in space and just my mind was active. No body feeling, just like my brain was up in space. I had nothing but my mind. Weightless, I had nothing.”16
2. Helplessly Watching Relatives
I have described how, in the bardo of becoming, the dead are able to see and hear their living relatives, but are unable, sometimes frustratingly, to communicate with them. A woman from Florida told Michael Sabom how she looked down on her mother from a point near the ceiling: “The biggest thing I remember was that I felt so sad that I couldn’t somehow let her know that I was all right. Somehow I knew that I was all right, but I didn’t know how to tell her . . .”17
“I remember seeing them down the hall . . . my wife, my oldest son and my oldest daughter and the doctor . . . I didn’t know why they were crying.”18
And a woman told Michael Sabom: “I was sitting way up there looking at myself convulsing and my mother and my maid screaming and yelling because they thought I was dead. I felt so sorry for them, . . . just deep, deep sadness. But I felt I was free up there and there was no reason for suffering.”19
3. Perfect Form, Mobility, and Clairvoyance
The mental body in the bardo of becoming is described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead as being “like a body of the golden age,” and as having almost supernatural mobility and clairvoyance. The near-death experiencers also find that the form they have is complete and in the prime of life:
“I was floating and I was a much younger man . . . The impression I got was that I was able to see myself some way through a reflection or something where I was twenty years younger than what I actually was.”20
They find also that they can travel instantaneously, simply by the power of thought. A Vietnam veteran told Michael Sabom:
“I felt like I could have thought myself anywhere I wanted to be instantly . . . I just felt exhilarated with a sense of power. I could do what I wanted to . . . It’s realer than here, really.21
“I remember all of a sudden going right back to the battle-field where I had been lost . . . It was almost like you materialize there and all of a sudden the next instant you were over here. It was just like you blinked your eyes.”22
Many near-death experiencers also report a clairvoyant sense of total knowledge “from the beginning of time to the end of time.”23 A woman told Raymond Moody: “All of a sudden, all knowledge of all that had started from the very beginning, that would go on without end—for a second I knew all the secrets of the ages, all the meaning of the universe, the stars, the moon—of everything.”24
“There was a moment in this thing—well, there isn’t any way to describe it—but it was like I knew all things . . . For a moment, there, it was like communication wasn’t necessary. I thought whatever I wanted to know could be known.”25
“While I was there I felt at the center of things. I felt enlightened and cleansed. I felt I could see the point of everything. Everything fitted in, it all made sense, even the dark times. It almost seemed, too, as if the pieces of jigsaw all fitted together.”26
4. Meeting Others
In the Tibetan teachings the mental body in the bardo of becoming is described as meeting other beings in the bardo. Similarly the near-death experiencer is often able to converse with others who have died. Michael Sabom’s Vietnam veteran said that as he lay unconscious on the battlefield, viewing his own body:
The thirteen guys that had been killed the day before that I had put in plastic bags were right there with me. And more than that, during the course of that month of May, my particular company lost forty-two dead. All forty-two of those guys were there. They were not in the form we perceive the human body . . . but I know they were there. I felt their presence. We communicated without talking with our voices.27
A woman whose heart stopped under anesthetic during a dental extraction said:
Then I found myself, I was in a beautiful landscape, the grass is greener than anything seen on earth, it has a special light or glow. The colors are beyond description, the colors here are so drab by comparison . . . In this place I saw people that I knew had died. There were no words spoken, but it was as if I knew what they were thinking, and at the same time I knew that they knew what I was thinking.28
5. Different Realms
In the bardo of becoming, as well as many other kinds of visions, the mental body will see visions and signs of different realms. A small percentage of those who have survived a near-death experience report visions of inner worlds, of paradises, cities of light, with transcendental music.
One woman told Raymond Moody:
Off in the distance . . . I could see a city. There were buildings—separate buildings. They were gleaming, bright. People were happy in there. There was sparkling water, fountains . . . a city of light I guess would be the way to say it . . . It was wonderful. There was beautiful music. Everything was just glowing, wonderful . . . But if I had entered into this, I think I would never have returned . . . I was told that if I went there I couldn’t go back . . . that the decision was mine.29
Another person told Margot Grey:
I seemed to find myself in what appeared to be some type of structure or building, but there were no walls that I can remember. There was only this all-pervading beautiful golden light . . . I noticed about me many people that seemed to be walking or milling about; they didn’t even appear to walk, but seemed somehow to glide. I didn’t feel apart from them at all; one of the feelings I remember most about them was the feeling of unity, of being totally a part of everything around me and about me.30
6. Hellish Visions
Not all descriptions in the near-death experience, however, are positive, as you would expect from what we have spoken of in the Tibetan teachings. Some people report terrifying experiences of fear, panic, loneliness, desolation, and gloom, vividly reminiscent of the descriptions of the bardo of becoming. One person reported by Margot Grey spoke of being sucked into “a vast black vortex like a whirlpool,” and those who have negative experiences tend to feel, rather like those about to be reborn in lower realms in the bardo of becoming, that they are traveling downward instead of upward:
I was moving along as part of a river of sound—a constant babble of human noise . . . I felt myself sinking into and becoming part of the stream and slowly being submerged by it. A great fear possessed me as if I knew that once overcome by this ever growing mass of noise that I would be lost.31
I was looking down into a large pit, which was full of swirling gray mist and there were all these hands and arms reaching up and trying to grab hold of me and drag me in there. There was a terrible wailing noise, full of desperation.32
Other people have even experienced what can only be called hellish visions, of intense cold or unbearable heat, and heard the sounds of tormented wailing or a noise like that of wild beasts. A woman reported by Margot Grey said:
I found myself in a place surrounded by mist. I felt I was in hell. There was a big pit with vapor coming out and there were arms and hands coming out trying to grab mine . . . I was terrified that these hands were going to claw hold of me and pull me into the pit with them . . . An enormous lion bounded towards me from the other side and I let out a scream. I was not afraid of the lion, but I felt somehow he would unsettle me and push me into that dreadful pit . . . It was very hot down there and the vapor or steam was very hot.33
A man who suffered a cardiac arrest reported: “I was going down, down deep into the earth. There was anger and I felt this horrible fear. Everything was gray. The noise was fearsome, with snarling and crashing like maddened wild animals, gnashing their teeth.”34
Raymond Moody writes that several people claimed to have seen beings who seemed trapped by their inability to surrender their attachments to the physical world: possessions, people, or habits. One woman spoke of these “bewildered people”:
What you would think of as their head was bent downward; they had sad depressed looks; they seemed to shuffle, as someone would on a chain gang . . . they looked washed out, dull, gray. And they seemed to be forever shuffling and moving around, not knowing where they were going, not knowing who to follow, or what to look for.
As I went by they didn’t even raise their heads to see what was happening. They seemed to be thinking, “Well, it’s all over with. What am I doing? What’s it all about?” Just this absolute, crushed, hopeless demeanor—not knowing what to do or where to go or who they were or anything else.
They seemed to be forever moving, rather than just sitting, but in no special direction. They would start straight, then veer to the left and take a few steps and veer back to the right. And absolutely nothing to do. Searching, but for what they were searching I don’t know.35
In the accounts we have of the near-death experience, a border or limit is occasionally perceived; a point of no return is reached. At this border the person then chooses (or is instructed) to return to life, sometimes by the presence of light. Of course in the Tibetan bardo teachings there is no parallel to this, because they describe what happens to a person who actually dies. However, in Tibet there was a group of people, called déloks, who had something like a near-death experience, and what they report is fascinatingly similar.
A curious phenomenon, little known in the West, but familiar to Tibetans, is the délok. In Tibetan délok means “returned from death,” and traditionally déloks are people who seemingly “die” as a result of an illness, and find themselves traveling in the bardo. They visit the hell realms, where they witness the judgment of the dead and the sufferings of hell, and sometimes they go to paradises and buddha realms. They can be accompanied by a deity, who protects them and explains what is happening. After a week the délok is sent back to the body with a message from the Lord of Death for the living, urging them to spiritual practice and a beneficial way of life. Often the déloks have great difficulty making people believe their story, and they spend the rest of their lives recounting their experiences to others in order to draw them toward the path of wisdom. The biographies of some of the more famous déloks were written down, and are sung all over Tibet by traveling minstrels.
A number of aspects of the délok correspond not only with, as you would expect, the bardo teachings such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but also with the near-death experience.
Lingza Chökyi was a famous délok who came from my part of Tibet and lived in the sixteenth century. In her biography she tells how she failed to realize she was dead, how she found herself out of her body, and saw a pig’s corpse lying on her bed, wearing her clothes. Frantically she tried in vain to communicate with her family, as they set about the business of the practices for her death. She grew furious with them when they took no notice of her and did not give her her plate of food. When her children wept, she felt a “hail of pus and blood” fall, which caused her intense pain. She tells us she felt joy each time the practices were done, and immeasurable happiness when finally she came before the master who was practicing for her and who was resting in the nature of mind, and her mind and his became one.
After a while she heard someone whom she thought was her father calling to her, and she followed him. She arrived in the bardo realm, which appeared to her like a country. From there, she tells us, there was a bridge that led to the hell realms, and to where the Lord of Death was counting the good or evil actions of the dead. In this realm she met various people who recounted their stories, and she saw a great yogin who had come into the hell realms in order to liberate beings.
Finally Lingza Chökyi was sent back to the world, as there had been an error concerning her name and family, and it was not yet her time to die. With the message from the Lord of Death to the living, she returned to her body and recovered, and spent the rest of her life telling of what she had learned.
The phenomenon of the délok was not simply a historical one; it continued up until very recently in Tibet. Sometimes a délok would leave the body for about a week, and meet people who had died, sometimes quite unknown to the délok, who would give messages for their living relatives and ask these relatives to do certain kinds of practices on their behalf. The délok would then return to his or her body and deliver their messages. In Tibet this was an accepted occurrence, and elaborate methods were devised for detecting whether déloks were fraudulent or not. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s daughter told Françoise Pommaret, author of a book on the déloks, that in Tibet, while the délok was undergoing his or her experience, the orifices of the body were stopped with butter, and a paste made from barley flour put over the face.36 If the butter did not run and the mask did not crack, the délok was recognized as authentic.
The tradition of déloks continues in the Tibetan Himalayan regions today. These déloks are quite ordinary people, often women, who are very devoted and have great faith. They “die” on special days in the Buddhist calendar, for a number of hours, and their major function is to act as messengers between the living and the dead.
As we have seen, there are significant similarities between the near-death experience and the bardo teachings; there are also significant differences. The greatest difference, of course, is the fact that the near-death experiencers do not die, whereas the teachings describe what happens to people as they die, after actual physical death, and as they take rebirth. The fact that the near-death experiencers do not go further on the journey into death—some of them are only “dead” for one minute—must go some way to explaining at least the possibility for disparities between the two accounts.
Some writers have suggested the near-death experience expresses the stages of the dissolution process in the bardo of dying. It is premature, I feel, to try to link the near-death experience too precisely with the bardo descriptions, because the person who has survived the near-death experience has only been—literally—“near death.” I explained to my master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche the nature of the near-death experience, and he called it a phenomenon that belongs to the natural bardo of this life, because the consciousness merely leaves the body of the person who has “died,” and wanders temporarily in various realms.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche implied that the near-death experiencers are experiencing their clinical death within the natural bardo of this life. Perhaps they are standing on the threshold of the bardos, but they have not actually entered into them and returned. Whatever they experience, they are still in the natural bardo of this life. Is their experience of the light similar to the dawning of the Ground Luminosity? Could it be that just before its vast sun rises, they catch a strong glimpse of the first rays of dawn?
Whatever the ultimate meaning of the details of the near-death experience, I remain extremely moved by the many accounts I have heard or read, and struck especially by some of the attitudes that flow from these experiences, attitudes that mirror so richly the Buddhist view of life. Two I have already spoken of: the profound transformation and spiritual awakening that takes place in those who have been through this experience; and the implications for our lives of the life-review. The life-review happens again and again in the near-death experience, and demonstrates so clearly the inescapability of karma and the far-reaching and powerful effects of all our actions, words, and thoughts. The central message that the near-death experiencers bring back from their encounter with death, or the presence or “being of light,” is exactly the same as that of Buddha and of the bardo teachings: that the essential and most important qualities in life are love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom.
They are surely beginning to see what the bardo teachings tell us: that life and death are in the mind itself. And the confidence that many of them seem to have after this experience reflects this deeper understanding of mind.
There are also certain, fascinating similarities between the near-death experience and its results, and mystical states and altered states of consciousness. For example, a number of paranormal phenomena have been reported by the near-death experiencers. Some have precognitive or prophetic planetary visions, or “life previews,” that turn out to be uncannily accurate; after the near-death experience, some report experiences of what appears to be the energy of kundalini;37 others find they have real and amazing powers of clairvoyance, or psychic or physical healing.
Many of those who have come near death speak in a personal, undeniably eloquent way of the beauty, love, peace and bliss and wisdom of what they have experienced. To me this sounds like they have had certain glimpses of the radiance of the nature of mind, and it is hardly surprising that such glimpses should have resulted in true spiritual transformation, again and again. Yet as Margot Grey points out, “We do not need nearly to die in order to experience a higher spiritual reality.”38 That higher spiritual reality is here and now, in life, if only we can discover and enter it.
I would like to make one essential caution: Don’t let these accounts of the near-death experience, which are so inspiring, lull you into believing that all you have to do in order to dwell in such states of peace and bliss is to die. It is not, and could not be, that simple.
Sometimes when people are going through suffering and pain, they feel they cannot bear it anymore; and hearing the near-death stories might, it is conceivable, tempt them to put an end to it all by taking their lives. This might seem like a simple solution, but it overlooks the fact that whatever we go through is part of life. It’s impossible to run away. If you run away, you will only come to face your suffering in an even deeper way later on.
Besides, while it is true that the majority of near-death experiences that have been collected have been good ones, there is still some speculation as to whether this reflects the actual rarity of negative, terrifying experiences, or merely the difficulty in recollecting them. People may not want or consciously be able to remember the darker or more frightening experiences. Also the near-death experiencers themselves stress that what they have learned is the importance of transforming our lives now, while we are still alive, for we have, they say “a more important mission while we’re here.”39
This transformation of our lives now is the urgent and essential point. Wouldn’t it be tragic if this central message of the near-death experience—that life is inherently sacred and must be lived with sacred intensity and purpose—was obscured and lost in a facile romanticizing of death? Wouldn’t it be even more tragic if such a facile optimism further deepened that disregard for our actual responsibilities to ourselves and our world that is menacing the survival of the planet?
Inevitably some have tried to show that the events of the near-death experience constitute something other than a spiritual experience, and reductionist scientists have tried to explain it away in terms of physiological, neurological, chemical, or psychological effects. The near-death experience researchers, however, doctors and scientists themselves, have countered these objections lucidly one by one, and insist that they cannot explain the whole of the near-death experience. As Melvin Morse writes at the end of his magnificent book Closer to the Light: Learning from Children’s Near-Death Experiences:
But near-death experiences appear to be a cluster of events so that one cannot understand the total by looking at its various pieces. One cannot understand music by studying the various frequencies of sound that generate each note, nor does one need to have a deep understanding of acoustical physics to enjoy Mozart. The near-death experience remains a mystery.40
Melvin Morse also says:
I feel that just understanding near-death experiences will be our first step at healing the great division between science and religion that started with Isaac Newton almost three hundred years ago. Educating physicians, nurses, and ourselves about what people experience in those final hours will shatter our prejudices about the ways we think about medicine and life.41
In other words the very advance in medical technology is simultaneously providing the means to revolutionize itself. Melvin Morse says:
I find it ironic that it is our medical technology that has led to this plethora of near-death experiences. . . . There have been near-death experiences throughout the centuries, but it has only been in the last twenty years that we have had the technology to resuscitate patients. Now they are telling us about their experiences, so let’s listen to them. This to me is a challenge for our society . . . Near-death experiences, to my mind, are a natural, psychological process associated with dying. I’m going to boldly predict if we can reintegrate this knowledge into our society, not only will it help with dying patients, but it will help society as a whole. I see medicine today as being devoid of spirit. . . . There is no reason why technology and the spirit cannot exist side by side.42
One of the reasons I have written this book is to show I believe what Melvin Morse says is possible: Technology and the spirit can and must exist side by side, if our fullest human potential is to be developed. Wouldn’t a complete, and completely useful, human science have the courage to embrace and explore the facts of the mystical, the facts of death and dying as revealed in the near-death experience and in this book?
Bruce Greyson, one of the leading figures in near-death research, says:
Science must try to explain the near-death experience because therein lies the key to its own growth. . . . History tells us that only in trying to explain phenomena which are currently beyond our reach will science develop new methods. I believe the near-death experience is one of the puzzles that just might force scientists to develop a new scientific method, one that will incorporate all sources of knowledge, not only logical deduction of the intellect, and empirical observation of the physical, but direct experience of the mystical as well.43
Bruce Greyson has also said he believes near-death experiences occur for a reason: “Based on my watching near-death experiences for a number of years, I think that we have these experiences in order to learn how to help others.”
Kenneth Ring sees yet another extraordinary possibility and meaning to the near-death experiences. He asks why so many people are now having such experiences and going through spiritual transformation at this time. For many years one of the bravest pioneers in the field of near-death research, he has come to see the near-death experiencers as being “messengers of hope,” speaking of a higher and more noble spiritual reality, and calling us to change urgently every facet of how we live now; to end all war, all divisions between religions and peoples, and to protect and save the environment:
I believe . . . that humanity as a whole is collectively struggling to awaken to a newer and higher mode of consciousness, . . . and that the near-death experience can be viewed as an evolutionary device to bring about this transformation, over a period of years, in millions of persons.44
It may be that whether this is true or not depends on all of us: on whether we really have the courage to face the implications of the near-death experience and the bardo teachings, and by transforming ourselves transform the world around us, and so by stages the whole future of humanity.