“Beauty comes of all things”: Breaking-down the Near-death Experience in Netflix’s ‘Surviving Death’
The scientific and spiritual lessons from the much-needed new docu-series on the afterlife
I was very excited to hear of a brand-new documentary miniseries about the possibility of survival after death — and especially that the first episode is dedicated to the near-death experience (NDE), on which I am presently doing a PhD and this article will focus. There is a litany of NDE doc’s out there already, coaxed after Moody’s popularisation of the phenomenon in 1975 — but most are quaintly dated, both in style and research. The cinematography is beautiful, in its valiant attempts to reanimate the descriptions given by experiencers (a tricksy task to balance both the illumination of that Other World and obfuscating it further with visual literalisation), and though the classic case of Pam Reynolds was exhumed once again, the fascinating accounts of more modern ‘popular’ NDErs were given voice on-screen. However, while the most respected psychiatrists working on the near-death phenomenon had to be interviewed (unsurprisingly those taking the more viewer-grabbing ‘survivalist’ perspective)— I felt there was a lack in featuring scientists who are currently at the frontier of elucidating the brain-mechanisms of the dying process. That is not to say I take a materialistic view myself, as I hope will be clear in the unfolding of the article.
Varieties of near-death experience
Let’s get right into tunneling down into the phenomenology of the NDE that some experiencers share in the show. (SPOILERS: If you’ve not watched the program I recommend doing so before reading on, as I will be very explicit about a lot of the episode’s details). One individual articulates that she felt she was “receiving information from really high-frequency teachers”. This element of communing with highly advanced beings is common in (deeper) NDEs — but this way of describing it is very akin to the DMT experience, DMT being the potent, short-acting psychedelic endogenous to the body and which much evidence suggests may be implicated in the NDE. Interestingly, while my research presently suggests an over-exaggeration of the DMT-NDE comparability, this DMT-like nature to some NDEs will crop up several times in the course of the article.
Another describes that “if I could touch a leaf — then I would become part of that leaf” — a depiction of the mystical experience of one’s Self being totally consistent with the rest of the world. Though my data tentatively points to NDEs not involving at least the dissolution of ego (‘normally’ considered the other side of the coin to such unitive-mystical experiences), such a sense of harmony with the universe is endemic to those more profound experiences.
Yet another shares that she began as “a tiny spec of light, then I became a great big light”. The idea of the spiritual essence being like a light has been around as long as religion has been — more contemporary reports of death-bed visions (DBVs) additionally include orbs of light appearing around the person near-death or lifting from the body during death. That the atman (the individual soul-like presence) and the Brahman (the singular unifying breath of all existence) are considered separate prior to enlightenment until perfectly unified, indeed considered identical, at true awakening (an opportunity for which the Tibetan Buddhists say manifests at death), is also resonant with how this NDEr described her experience. The famous NDEr Pam Reynolds asked upon finding herself dappled under this divine glow, “Is that God?” — until receiving the answer “No. This is what happens when God breathes”. “I’m standing in the Breath of God”, she whispered to her (etheric) self. ‘The Light’ has become the household heuristic when anyone thinks of the NDE, and indeed in a recent qualitative analysis this experience of light is one of the most common. An analogue of the DMT compound, 5MeO-DMT (also native to the body), is also known to produce experiences of Divine Light, received as the ground of Being, with the experient often becoming equivalent to it as had the show’s interviewee.
The man above who, making like a tree, swiftly left this life and merged with his leaf — he again reports something rather DMT-resembling. That is, experiencing a tunnel “not like most” but which he fell into and was completely integrated into “just colour” — hyper-vivid and encompassing patterns of colours being characteristic of the psychedelic. He also saw a man who he realised was his deceased father, telling him to return to his body, which is one of the frequent-most features of the NDE. A recent book, Changed in a Flash by Jeff Kripal and Elizabeth Krohn, reports the latter’s NDE, in which she very interestingly reveals that upon encountering her dead grandfather she knew it somehow was not truly ‘him’. While the interviewee above was able to resolve some deep father-son bitterness in their rendezvous in the brief beyond — I think Krohn’s sentiments are potentially revelatory about the mystery and paradox of meeting our deceased relatives at the point of death, implying their continued preservation in a world of egoic personality and time-space co-linear with our own (of course anyone with a belief in such a thing as the Heaven portrayed by modern Judeo-Christian dogma would not find this perplexing). Kripal, a historian of religion, alludes to a principle tantamount to God projecting her grandfather to her (who may be an emanation of such a God-head, as may she herself be).
Later we meet the International Association for Near-Death Studies support group in Seattle. The congregation there seems made, in the majority, of women, which is interesting since although men seem to be just as likely to report NDEs as women, some research indicates women may experience deeper NDEs (which could mean a need for greater support).
NDEs as spiritual emergencies
An extremely poignant scene involves a woman sitting with the group facilitator, sharing that after her NDE she couldn’t even talk to her husband as she felt those she opened up to were “going to bring a straight-jacket and throw away the key”, and that “what I used to know is not what I know now”. The counsellor (herself an NDEr) responds sympathetically — “It’s hard to live in the same world with a completely different point of view”. To which the experiencer replies, tears welling in eyes which have gazed upon more than we might ever conceive — “And it’s so hard when everyone else’s view hasn't changed…” This is a beautiful, heartstring-playing, examplar of anyone who is going through a “spiritual emergency” or other similar spontaneous awakening process. What I learnt from this interaction is that, while many NDErs repeat that they’re cautious to reveal their transcendent experience for fear of psychiatric misdiagnosis or even institutionalisation — it is not strictly the experience itself but actually their worldview, utterly transformed as it is and inconsistent with conventional culture (spiritually asleep as it is), which they fear will be damagingly pathologised. Thus ensues the perennial dance between the mystical and psychotic experience of the world, the latter all the more likely to exert itself if the core experience is not integrated with the understanding and support it requires. Visceral revelations with which NDErs may return after their forays into fractures in the veil — the illusory nature of the world, the dreamlike quality of spacetime, the indestructibility of their essential essence, the self as indistinguishable from other, metaphysical beings orchestrating a plan on Earth — may all be treated by a medical system, unprepared to properly guide, with quetiapine or risperidone. Unconducive to the quietude that could otherwise be reached, and unacknowledging of the resplendence of the mystical experience.
Bruce Greyson, the doyen (and don) of the NDE, is quoted in the show as saying “What is going on here to change a person’s life in a fraction of a second?”. This is an extremely pertinent question. The renaissance in psychedelic science gaining exponential traction now includes giving psilocybin (magic mushrooms) to those with a host of psychiatric ills. One seminal paper in healthy persons reported most claiming, over a year after one single psilocybin-occasioned mystical experience, that it was one of the single most personally and spiritually significant experiences of their lives. These experiences, however, are many hours long — contrasted to the order of minutes (maximum) of the NDE. The DMT experience, on the other hand, may be a different matter. The very peak effects of this drug are also in the order of minutes, and may also lead to profound shifts in one’s ontological positions on life (akin to classic conversion experiences, turning from materialist atheism to metaphysical belief systems).
Explained by the brain?
Somewhat later Dr. Bruce attempts to undermine the brain deoxygenation theory of NDEs by claiming that when someone’s hypoxic they become “frightened, belligerent and terrified — much unlike the calm, consistent, blissful NDEs”. This is a very unconvincing rebuttal, since obviously the former are experiencing lack of oxygen prior to the point of losing consciousness while the latter NDEs are reported only after such unconsciousness. Indeed, as he himself says, the hypoxia theory is ultimately appealing since it is the final common pathway regardless of any cause of the dying episode. What he doesn't mention is the host of downstream neural events that may come of this hypoxia — namely release of neurochemicals (not least endogenous psychedelics) which could mediate the ‘calm, consistency and bliss’ intrinsic to the NDE.
We also hear from preeminent neuropsychiatrist, non-dual aficionado and rather light-being-reminiscent (white-haired, imposing stature and kindly, elderly father-figure) Peter Fenwick. He states that skeptics will enthusiastically point out that the given NDEr from cardiac arrest still has preserved a sliver of brain “which you’ve all missed”, but he continues that such a naive view betrays that these nay-sayers “don't understand consciousness”. That is, you can’t maintain consciousness unless you have a highly organised brain — and the brain during NDEs is anything but organised. Greyson tag-teams to again substantiate this stance, saying flatlining occurs 20 seconds after the heart stops which means no brain activity — “yet NDEs are reported after flatlining for longer”. Fenwick is quick to pick-up again, reiterating that there’s a “wide expansion of consciousness even when there’s no brain function — it cannot be all brain”. My opinion is that the data is much more nuanced than these good doctors may have one believe. Contrary to these connoisseurs of consciousness’ conceptions, there is evidence of some brain activity post-cardiac-arrest — meaning instead of a perplexing irony, some neuronal machinations may still be instrumental to the NDErs’ testimonies. Specifically, an unleashing of neurotransmitters and a storm of coherent, high-frequency (albeit low power) electrical activity — at least after ‘experimentally’ killing lab-rats. Though these high-frequency surges (in the frontal brain) are identified in humans taken off life-support as well.
If one is throwing out the brain with the (cerebrospinal) bathwater to make claims of NDE’s illustrating mind-beyond-brain, a persevering scientist would look for some processes embedded in the dying brain activity which is of the tremendously organised nature expected to produce such lucid, vivid conscious experiences…and indeed these data suggest none other than that. Yet the two physicians simply don't talk about it (or aren't shown to). One main problem with these neural results, however, is the timing — the NDE’s occurrence is hard to pin down, anytime between the shutting down and reanimation processes of the brain as well as the period of apparent silence in between, but no longer than a matter of minutes. The experimental data reflects different time-courses too — for the electrical surge, from within 30 seconds after rodent cardiac arrest to several minutes in humans after blood-pressure loss. For the neurotransmitter deluge, again from one to many minutes after rodent experimental death. So while the two theoretically may align — despite the comparison, admittedly, being near-death against actual death — the exact correlation has not been demonstrated. Even if it is demonstrated, there will forever be the contention of the ‘hard problem of consciousness’, that is, we cannot even explain the link between the brain and the mind in general, let alone that between this sudden terminal brain activity and the profound experiences near-death.
Pam Reynolds, of NDE-hyperspace hype, had a massive cranial aneurysm and so was opted for ‘hypothermic cardiac arrest’, a procedure entailing taping of eyes & plugging of ears, her heart being stopped, blood drained from the brain, head drastically cooled — and not mentioned on the show, being given a drug to cease the metabolism of her brain. She was clinically dead for an hour. The show stated she had a flat EEG (measuring brain activity) — though they also don't mention the recording of audio-evoked-potentials from her brainstem, ensuring its continued activity (this said of course, no neuroscientist would claim any high-level experience is feasible from purely brainstem function). Astoundingly, she correctly reported seeing during an OBE a drill which looked like an electric toothbrush (the ‘midas rex’ surgical drill) and a case with drill-bits which reminded her of her dad’s box of socket-wrenches. Skeptical minds have pointed out that such verified events did not actually occur during the time in which her heart was stopped and brain drained…however, given her anaesthesia and eyes and ears being obscured, even if she was technically still alive and regained some consciousness, this is still a possibly inexplicable feat.
Are NDEs a reliable window into what to expect at death?
The series’ title-sequence’s first words are “At the moment of death are you actually just dead — or is there something else going on?” I think this very statement echoes something very salient about this whole discussion, which resurrects this issue of comparing the near-death state to that of real death, including whether the NDE can truly teach us something about the ‘death experience’. It’s not difficult to see how the NDE may at best be a glimpse into the passage-way to what may (or may not) lie beyond, because of course we only hear about those inadvertent expeditioners to that undiscovered country who return — thus not qualifying for the technical definition of death (irreversibility). If even such thanatonauts who have come so close are still only documenting the liminal zone, then it may be that the condition of the afterlife is still an utterly black box.
Not just this, but it is opaque to the crudeness and insensitivity not only of our sensory apparatus, evolved for survival by attunement to this earth-bound experience — but we’re also linguistically ensnared. Jeff Kripal again makes the observation that Krohn’s NDE vision of a sublime garden, yet with a light pregnant with transcendence glinting behind the distant mountains, is perfectly illustrative of the idea of the totality of mystic unity perhaps being the ultimate eschatological aspiration. But until that moment, we are forever at the foothills of duality and symbolic representation that our ego-constrained animal minds can conceive — including the spacetime linearity exacerbated by thinking in language. These transcendent mystical domains of psyche are ineffable by nature, where these otherworldly journeyers may well be fleetingly experiencing such a twilight zone of reality, yet to reconstruct it in mind’s eye is an exercise in futility (like forcing a 4-dimensional hypercube into a 3-dimensional cube hole — perhaps literally).
In some other sense, the spirit world may not just be obscured to us for reasons of never hearing word of it, or our brain-mind complex’s being incompatible with, by definition, transcendent realities. Perhaps it’s because there isn’t such a thing as the ‘spirit world’ as might be thought to enter after the initial NDE ‘phase’; a heaven-like world somehow superimposed on or parallel to our own and operating in similarly familiar ways. This may also go for worldviews suggested by mediumship especially (the topic of the following episodes) in which the spirits of the dead are still ‘all around us’ living perfectly contentedly, and only upon ‘raising our vibrations’ may we ‘connect’ with them like some unworldly-wide web. A cynicism about this kind of continued life in another world makes me think of The Eagles’ divinely inspired Hotel California in which the final lyrics are,
“You can check-out anytime you like — but you can never leave”
In other words, traditional reincarnation or the Nietzschean Eternal Return…the multiverse is ‘one’ eternally-churning perpetual motion machine with the souls of its inhabiting organisms endlessly percolating through one body and into another, with the light of the transliminal space shining through only during these transitional moments (such as NDEs), in recombining permutations ad infinitum.
Back to planet Earth, resolving closer to the NDE-Death debate — for one thing, only a portion of those reviving from cardiac arrest (up to 20%) report a near-death experience (though this may be higher with less stringent definitions and accounting for memory loss or reticence to report). So most of us may never even experience one at near-death let alone death, which may undermine the literal survivalist perspective. Obviously too, even if the NDE is an authentically non-local (nonmaterial) phenomenon, it may only be transient. Consciousness may well leak into the extra-neuronal environment (and there’s plenty of psi data to suggest this) — but even this may be a temporary exertion of the mind’s capacity before final extinguishment takes place… Or, of course, the ‘soul’ does continue on its ineffable adventure, but we can just never hear about it until the clock tics its final toc for ourselves.
Some titilating evidence, however, may give some greater support for the latter possibility. Probably key amongst them being the mystical experience spoken of already — very deep NDEs can involve immersion into that ultimate illumination beyond Krohn’s mountains (and offered by one of the first reports above). Though perhaps requiring a leap of faith being contiguous with Buddhist descriptions, for instance, of the Clear Light one is witness to at death, tantamount to the very ground of Being — such a transcendence of sensorial and cognitive categories gestures toward a more fundamental reality with which we are only scarcely interfacing when assuming our every-day default mode. Also, what are called ‘shared’ or ‘empathic’ NDEs may offer valuable insight. Though misconstrued, it's best to think of the former entailing two (or more) people dying at the same time yet one doesn't actually die and returns, while the latter involves someone at the bedside, for instance, of a person as they die — where both living parties report a near-death-like experience alongside the dying, as if accompanying them on their ‘real-death’ experience before being returned. While certain other parapsychological mechanisms could be at play, the narrative is essentially exactly that which you would expect if after-death continuation was genuine (which the empathic death experiences’ circumstances of not having addled, or enhanced, brain function may also support).
The NDE of Stephanie Arnold
The episode takes an intimate look at Stephanie Arnold’s experience, who, after a series of intense premonitions about her own death during labour, did indeed have an emergency C-section and upon severe haemorrhaging slipped into some orthogonal world. She reports, during her 37 seconds of clinical death, an OBE in which she saw the specific nurse who broke into CPR, her daughter and the nanny in a different part of the hospital — as well as her husband’s specific clothes as he was getting off a plane to be with her (not knowing she may already be with him). This type of clairvoyance at the point of death is a familiar theme — transpiring in other well-known NDE cases such as Anita Moorjani’s (in which she saw her brother also flying to be at her side) and Coltan Burpo’s (who observed his father as he prayed in the hospital chapel). Stephanie also reports encountering her grandma who died when she was 10, and her uncle. Her doctor, Julie, was whispering under her breath as the resuscitation attempts unfolded, “this cannot be happening, this cannot be happening” — a muttering which Stephanie heard and verified with her doctor (who, aptly, “couldn't breathe” after hearing of Stephanie’s knowledge). The reductionist claim would be the predictable retort that ‘hearing is the last thing to go’, so Stephanie’s mind accurately re-constructed her surroundings from audio information alone… And presumably, this can account for re-constructing her husband’s attire in an airport miles away.
Fascinatingly, Stephanie also articulates that “In this other dimension, spatial relations break down. There was no wall, no ceiling — everything was moving around in so many different directions”. While transcendence of space-time is a common feature, a description like this is more akin to DMT experiences which often results in reports of more than the 3 dimensions we’re accustomed to — such as rapidly moving hyperdimensional objects. She also describes the OBE not in the most typical terms, but as being like a “3D movie” and being perpendicular to her body, as if she was “in two places at once”. One 1937 NDE resonantly reads that “my consciousness separated from another consciousness which was also me” — which Gregory Shushan (another historian of NDEs) links to the dual-consciousness beliefs of many early civilisations, such as the ba and ka of Egypt or even the Mesoamerican teyolia, tonalli or ihiyotl. Such a variation has also appeared in my DMT data. Also, Greyson points out her pre-NDE premonitions are quite uncommon. A recent online talk by doula Jo Piercey included the anonymous line “It is said that women in labour leave their bodies…they travel to the stars to collect the souls of their babies, and return to this world together” (was the unborn child communicating with her, to save her?). Piercey elaborated that even throughout pregnancy a woman can become extraordinarily sensitive to the subtle information around them, which may well include such ‘psychic openings’ as that which Mrs. Arnold went through. Her prophetic visions did intensify after her NDE, the period of time well-documented to entail precognitive experiences or other releases of latent psi potential (including Krohn, who after being struck by lightning was plagued by precog dreams of devastation). Stephanie’s presentiments were similarly of threat to life, which is consistent with theories of extrasensory perception having naturally evolved to assist in organismal survival — however, both are of threat to others’ lives, suggesting a blurring of the self-other boundary after such mystical near-death experiences.
Greyson remarks that folk who’ve undergone NDEs visit him because neither science nor religion help them understand their experience. This is poignant, as while science may only serve to reduce these experiences to brain activity, remarkable a product of nature as this may be (or at worse pathologise them) — religion may also short-change the yearning experient. Religion generally does not have a word to say on these profound and deeply spiritual experiences near-death (as historically such direct communion with the divine was suppressed)— except perhaps the Tibetan Buddhists in the Bardo Thodol whose “Deloks” (archaic Tibetan NDErs) were instrumental to its composition; or even Christ, whose shamanic initiation-like 40 days in the desert culminated in the devil whisking him to the top of the Earth and “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (Matthew 4:8), not unlike the ‘overview’ of the Earth recalled in many NDEs. This is especially ironic, given Gregory Shushan’s groundbreaking work substantiating the idea of ancient NDEs being the very progenitors of the eventual development of religions and afterlife beliefs as we know them today.
The NDE of Mary C Neal
Mary C Neal, orthopedic surgeon and best-selling author of To Heaven and Back, was kayaking in Chile when she careered over a waterfall. In the 30 minutes her brain was deprived of oxygen, and despite her fixed pupils upon body recovery (and later being informed of 0 chance of no brain damage), she had a profound near-death experience. She felt more alive than ever, felt her spirit peel away and into the heavens, and encountered “ a group of somethings” who felt like they had been “important in my life, like a grandparent who died before I was born”. They lead her down a pathway with “thousands of flowers of every colour of the universe”, and she experienced “all of eternity in every second, and every second expanded into all of eternity”. The Mystic, Blake’s immortal stanza barely needs to be reproduced here:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
She said she felt she “was in Heaven”, or “God’s world”, accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of being home and which she later qualified as a “great dome structure”. Virtually all the elements of this experience (not unlike a great many such NDEs reaching the ‘transcendent’ stage), emerge also in breakthrough DMT experiences — the ‘dome’ being a particular meme.
Eventually, the beings of this Beyond communicated that it wasn't her time and that she had more work to do. This is perhaps one of the most invariable components to the NDE — and to my mind, one of the least reducible to mainstream materialistic models. A grandparent who died before she was born is hardly the deceased loved one she may have expectations to see upon death — indeed there is a corpus of evidence of so-called ‘Peak in Darien’ experiences in which the dying encounter the dead not known by them to be dead (and who may have died contemporaneously with them). The especially repeated motif of being told to return as ‘you have more work to do’ is yet another one which I have great difficulty fitting into any psychological or neurological explanatory framework, and is especially compelling. A side-reflection on this feature is clearly the questions it brings up as to whether the near-death and eventual return betrays a mistake on the ‘higher beings’ part and so their lack of omniscience. Alternatively, the very near-death incident and resulting exposure to the deeper layers of reality may be a very deliberate and integral part to the plan devised by the supernal powers that be for that person. I think the communication of there being ‘more work to be done’ is illustrative of precisely this possibility — said work itself may be inspired by this transient sojourn to the supernatural sphere (not least to communicate it).
One other reductionistic claim might be that Mary was a Presbyterian Church elder of her town in Wyoming, and so her Christian beliefs can account for her NDE. The research shows that there is absolutely no correlation between incidence of NDEs and religious affiliation — however, the content of the experience is often influenced by one’s religious expectation. This said, Mary’s NDE lacked any explicit Christian imagery, and only in her post hoc interpretation does she use the words ‘God’s world’ or ‘angels’ (as in the subtitle of her book), when in actuality her raw experience was of “a group of something’s” not of overtly angelic design. Still, this may be congruent with her Protestant background (lacking the vivid imagery/iconography of Catholocism or Orthodoxy) — but such undefined entities are a native populace of the NDE-realm, and she also didn't say anything about meeting Jesus.
Finally, the spirits conveyed to Mary that one of her young sons was to have a sudden and unexpected death. She asked, “Why?”… Their response:
“Because beauty comes of all things”
To my mind, this was the most earth-shattering moment of the series — and certainly, beauty comes of listening deeply to that statement. To me, these few words have the potential to fracture our hardened hearts as we curse the universe for why bad things happen to good people, and let the light in. The light that liberates us from the hubris of our egos to presume an understanding of the laws of the cosmos, which may be spiritual as well as physical, and the controlling stance we take to our experience. The light that illuminates the truth that even in the bowels of despair after the tragic loss of an innocent child… there can still be beauty. Even in this. Indeed, perhaps the greatest beauty (instead of the greatest suffering) can come into being by the triumph over the pain by all those afflicted, and contemplation on the transience of all things imbuing them with all the more beauty. This communication also causes us to wonder if the beings had orchestrated her son’s demise and therefore giving us an insight into the kind of meta-ethics that the universe engages in. But perhaps such an orchestration was just as much for the beings’ sakes as it was for Mary and her loved ones. In their angelic nature, do they in some impossibly paradoxical way purposefully contrive to instill these ‘bad things’ in the world to lure out the sublime beauty which can come through our human struggles with them. Does this give them pleasure or delight? Is it a nectar from which they are spiritually sustained (not unlike for ourselves), due to their love for us? Alternatively, they may not be the implementing agents of such challenging experiences and universal meta-ethics, but are only privy to pieces of the grand scheme in our futures (which may equate to their ‘presence’). They are only the ‘messengers’ — which is after all the meaning of the word ‘angel’ — but that “beauty comes of all things” is still the interpretation of creatures orders of magnitude more evolved than ourselves.
I’ll leave the final word for Mary C Neal,
“Death is not the final word. It is not the end. Death is just the physical loss. I know my son is somewhere. And I know I’ll see him again.”