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Research News: You published your extraordinary study
on near-death experiences in the Lancet in January 2002.
It was a 13-year prospective study that found that 18 percent of people who
“died” of a cardiac arrest and were resuscitated had a near-death experience,
and 5 percent had a deep near-death experience. Your questionnaire followed
these people immediately after their heart attacks, two years later and eight
years later. It ruled out all the conventional explanations for near-death
experiences, such as an oxygen-deprived and hallucinating brain, fear of
death, medications and religious beliefs.
What have been the ripple effects since the publication of the study? Have
skeptics attacked it?
Pim van Lommel: It was generally well-received. There have
been a few skeptical responses but most of the worldwide reaction has been
very positive.
RN: Can you recount that one amazing story that you describe
in the study?
PVL: Yes. There was a man who had a heart attack and came
into the hospital cyanotic, or blue, from lack of oxygen.
First, they had to intubate him, and his nurse, a male, had to take out his
dentures and put them on the crash cart before intubating him. They had to
work on him for 90 minutes before they succeeded in restoring blood pressure
and heart rhythm. He still was in a coma and he had brain damage, because the
lack of oxygen causes a functional loss in the brain, which is reversible if
you can resuscitate someone in the first five to 10 minutes. He was still in
a coma after a week, which means totally unconscious without any reflexes.
But when he regained consciousness and saw the nurse come in to give him
medication, he said, “Oh you’re the one who took out my dentures and put them
in the drawer in that funny cart.” The nurse was totally flabbergasted and
practically had a near-death experience himself. The patient also described
the people in the room, and said, “I was desperately trying to contact you to
say, ‘Please go on, because if you stop trying to help me, I will die.’”
But like other people who’ve had near-death experiences, though he could
perceive what was happening and “hear” what was happening through thought
transfer, he could not communicate.
RN: Can you explain what happens when someone “dies” of a
cardiac arrest and is brought back to life? What happens physically and
neurologically? Are we sure the brain is inactive?
PVL: Yes. When you have a heart attack, your circulation
stops and you have a flat EEG. This has been studied in patients in whom we
implant internal defibrillators, or super pacemakers, so that if they should
have a life-threatening rhythm disturbance again, they won’t die. This is
implanted in a catheterization lab under anesthesia.
You put a line in the heart and you essentially create a heart attack and
then make sure the pacemaker is working. It’s called “threshold testing.”
This was studied in Holland, Germany and the United States with EEG
monitoring and measurements of the blood flow of the carotid artery to the
brain.
What you see when you induce cardiac arrest is that within one second the
blood flow to the brain is zero centimeters per second. Within two seconds,
it stops totally. After an average of 6.54 seconds, the first ischemic changes
show on the EEG, with attenuation of the waves. After 10 to 20 seconds, you
have a flat-line EEG, which means the electrical activity of the cortex is
gone. The brain stem reflexes — such as the gag reflex and whether the pupils
stay dilated — and the medulla oblongata — where the center of breathing is —
stops. So that’s the functional loss of your total brain.
Well, with a heart attack, if it occurs on the coronary care unit, it takes
between 60 and 120 seconds before circulation is restored. If it occurs on
the general ward, it takes two to five minutes. If it occurs in the street,
it usually exceeds five to 10 minutes, and 90 percent of those people will
die.
RN: That seems pretty strong proof that your patient
population was clinically dead. Was there any difference between the
in-hospital survivors and the on-the-street survivors in terms of near-death
experiences?
PVL: None. There was no correlation between duration of
cardiac arrest and near-death experience. The one difference was that people
who had a very lengthy and complicated resuscitation sometimes had cell death
in the brain and short-term memory problems as a result.
You see these people sometimes in the cardiac ward; it’s as if they don’t
know who they are. And they could not remember. You need a functioning memory
to remember a near-death experience. We also found more near-death
experiences among those younger than 60 years old, and among those who’d been
resuscitated several times. But the latter difference is just statistical —
it just means that people had more chances to have a NDE.
RN: Some cardiologists say they’ve never once heard any
patient speak of a NDE.
PVL: That may be true. I heard of someone who had a NDE
lecturing about it in the United States, and someone stood up and said, “I’ve
been a cardiologist for 25 years and I’ve never heard a story like this. This
is total nonsense.” And someone else in the audience stood up and said, “I’m
one of your patients. I had such an experience and you’re the last guy I
would tell about it because you’re so skeptical.”
RN: You note that one of the big differences between
a drug-induced “hallucinatory” experience and a NDE is that NDEs, especially
the deep ones, seem to result in spiritual transformation.
PVL: Yes, with a NDE the rest of your life has changed. The
people I’ve interviewed don’t simply “believe” that death doesn’t exist; they
know it. They are certain there is a continuation of consciousness and that
identity is still there.
A near-death experience is really an experience about life. You know that all
the thoughts you’ve ever had are kept, because of the life review that
occurs. Everything you’ve ever thought, felt or done is kept, and you know
the affect on others and yourself. You know now what is important in life.
RN: And that is … ?
PVL: To give love and compassion, first to yourself so that
you can then give it to others. And that’s a problem for those who’ve had a
NDE. Money, sex, your car, your house — these are not important any more.
What’s essential is how you behave to yourself and others.
RN: You’ve made an attempt to explain the NDE through
quantum mechanics. Do you want to explore that a bit?
PVL: During a NDE, people are in a dimension where
everything is, all at once, where, when they turn their attention to
something, instantaneously they’re there. Non-local communication is
everywhere.
I’ve drawn an analogy to the phase space, a higher dimensional space where
time and space don’t exist.
Some people said that once they were out of their body they felt one with the
flowers, with everybody — that they were still themselves and yet part of the
oneness. I draw an analogy to the particle and the wave.
RN: Some who undergo an NDE supposedly don’t just
have a life review, but a life preview. What does that say about free will?
PVL: I don’t know. That’s a very difficult question. I’ve
heard stories where someone sees they will marry, have two daughters, and 20
years later that’s what came to pass.
I don’t know how you prove they knew that before, because often it’s in the
form of déjà vu, where they suddenly say, “Oh, now I remember this from my
NDE.” But sometimes they talk about the preview at the time it happens.
Carl Jung had a NDE at age 43, and he describes it in a book. He saw the
globe from above, with the blue seas and clouds, but at the time we didn’t
have satellite imagery.
RN: What makes you trust these reports so deeply?
PVL: In our interviews two years and then eight years later,
they would give exactly the same story, in exactly the same words. And yet
they found it so hard to express what they had really experienced.
As Plato once said, “Words conceal more than reveal.”
RN: How has this work personally changed you?
PVL: I stopped my work as a cardiologist. I love cardiology,
but I can no longer work 70 hours a week and pursue this, as well. I also
understand that you need to be very careful how you live, and what you do and
think, because you will take it with you.
I’m still more scared of death than a person who has had a NDE, but compared
to most people, I’m not. In science, you have to be open, to ask questions
and get rid of all the concepts you had.
RN: You never wanted a near-death experience
yourself?
PVL: No. I understand enough. One of the reasons people open
up to me is that I understand what they’re saying. Sometimes they tell me the
story and their wife or husband turns to them and says, “You never told me!”
RN: Anecdotally, most people who report a NDE say that they
came back because they still had work to do or a task to fulfill. What do you
think about that?
PVL: They do say that, although often they don’t know what
the task is. I think the task is to share the experience, which can help
others.
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