7 Lessons From Heaven Page 7

  Now imagine the neurons (people) on each side of the river are from different countries and don’t speak the same language. The people on one side of the river calmly give their messages to a multilingual swimmer (the neurotransmitter) who can translate their message for the people on the other side. Neurotransmitter dumping by depolarized membranes would be like all the people shouting and pushing their translators into the river at the same time. There would be system overload, complete chaos, and all communication would fail.

  Still, many people hypothesize that it is precisely during this time of chaotic dumping that brain cells might be exposed to a concentrated bath of neurotransmitters like dopamine and/or, N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), thus creating near-death experiences.

  Not only has this never actually been shown to occur, but the hypothesis of neurotransmitter dumping causing the NDE has serious limitations. To begin with, the uncontrolled depolarization of neurons that occurs with a brain’s power failure releases neurotransmitters in a toxic concentration that kills brain cells. This sudden die-off is intensified by the calcium-induced bursting of brain cells that results in the added release of tissue-destroying free radicals.

  Furthermore, the brain tissue most sensitive to this destruction are the cells located within the horseshoe-shaped hippocampus—the area of the brain most responsible for the formation of new memories, and a critical component of transforming short-term memories into long-term ones. Without the hippocampus, no new long-term memories can form. None. In the context of drowning, after approximately five minutes without oxygen, the cells of my hippocampus should have suffered irreversible damage.17, 18, 19

  You can see where this logic leads: If the hippocampus is the region of the brain most sensitive to this cell destruction, and if the hippocampus is primarily responsible for memory creation and retention, then it is entirely illogical to credit the sudden dumping of neurotransmitters with the vivid and intense memories that are remembered for a lifetime by people who have had an NDE.

  But I had more reading to do. Despite what I saw as an illogical connection, I needed to know more about the known effects of both dopamine and, especially, DMT—the neurotransmitters that were most frequently mentioned in the literature when discussing the presumed cause of NDEs.

  WAS IT A DMT TRIP?

  Are you still with me? If you are not fond of science, I know we’re moving quickly through some tedious words and demanding ideas, but it is important to understand the sequence. But I don’t want you to miss out on the conclusion to my personal research, and we’re almost there. To tantalize you to keep reading, I will tell you that this final lap of my marathon research will deliver surprises like, well, dreaming rodents, a so-called “God particle,” alien beings, and a man named Scott who slipped into his encounter with death during what must have been a very boring company meeting.

  Who knew that science could be this much fun?

  I soon discovered that high levels of dopamine within the brain can produce euphoria, increase the intensity and frequency of dreams, and is released in anoxic events. On the other hand, it has also been shown to rapidly cause irreversible brain damage, does not stimulate either auditory or visual hallucinations, and has never been associated with any of the features typical of an NDE. For these reasons, I shifted my focus from dopamine to DMT.20, 21

  I learned that DMT produces psychoactive effects when it is smoked, injected, or ingested. It is widely found in the plant world and has an affinity for both serotonin and dopamine receptor sites, neurotransmitters that both play a role in mood and feelings of pleasure.

  There’s a hitch, though: DMT has never actually been found in humans.

  Still, because trace levels have been found in the pineal gland of rodents,22 some researchers have proposed that increased concentrations of DMT might be present in humans and might be released from the human pineal gland at birth, during dream states, and at the time of death. They have even gone so far as to call DMT the “God particle.”

  Despite frequent mention of DMT and the fact that anecdotal accounts of DMT “journeys” populate the literature, no one has yet replicated psychiatrist Rick Strassman’s groundbreaking work from the 1990s.

  Between 1990 and 1995, Dr. Strassman administered four hundred doses of DMT to sixty healthy volunteers. In these studies, he observed that many of the volunteers had some combination of increased visual acuity and sense of color, feelings of being catapulted through space at incredibly high speeds, experiencing an all-encompassing glow, and a sense of unity and interconnectedness. Many felt a sense of enlightenment, and timelessness, and felt like they merged with a supremely powerful, wise, and loving presence. In this study, the DMT experiencers uniformly declared that consciousness continues after death of the body.

  In his subsequent book The Spirit Molecule, Dr. Strassman describes this research experiment and suggests that if decomposing pineal tissue were to release DMT directly into the spinal fluid, it might reach the brain’s sensory and emotional centers, causing residual awareness, and might explain the imagery reported by NDEers (emphasis is mine).23 He went on to suggest that the human pineal gland might release DMT near the time of death, thereby accounting for the NDE phenomenon. Dr. Strassman’s work has been used to imbue DMT with almost mythical qualities, and this is the most frequently used justification when dismissing the spiritual reality of NDEs.

  Dr. Strassman’s suggestions, however, were entirely speculative and have never been shown to be true. And then there’s the fact that the DMT experience is qualitatively very different from that of an NDE.

  The overwhelmingly constant feature of NDEs is that of intense, unconditional love from beings that are recognizable and engaging. This is in contrast to the elves, fairies, and other alien beings that those experiencing DMT encounter. These alien beings are unfamiliar, are often reptilian, insectoid, or complex robotic machines that can be hostile and uninterested in the experiencer.

  Beyond the alien encounters, the DMT visual hallucinations typically involve seeing repeating colors in geometric patterns, described as “increasing geometry simply becoming so all-enveloping that absolutely nothing of the room is left anymore.”24 One DMT user wrote, “To the right of my mind space was a blue mass. [It was] a large entity formed of layers of strata, and bejeweled with many crystals along geometric fault lines which folded, twisted, and morphed its form in a mechanical fashion.”25

  According to Terence McKenna, with DMT, “the ordinary world is almost instantaneously replaced, not only with a hallucination, but a hallucination whose alien character is its utter alienness. Nothing in this world can prepare one for the impressions that fill your mind when you enter the DMT sensorium.” Yet, as strange as many of the descriptions are of DMT experiences, psychedelic writer James Kent claims that a person can actually impose any imagery he or she wants when in the DMT state and can call these alien entities into existence.26

  The consistently alien nature of a DMT experience, and one’s ability to influence or control the experience, is in stark contrast to the entirely understandable visions and people described by those who have experienced near death.

  DMT experiencers have also never reported veridical information—information received during the experience that coincides with real, but not yet known, events. And the memory of a DMT experience fades so quickly that proponents of using DMT recreationally strongly suggest that experiencers write about their experiences immediately upon “coming down.”

  Perhaps this is one reason why Dr. Strassman did not observe much positive carryover into the daily lives of DMT experiencers. He noted that the momentary intensity of their hallucinations failed to create lasting impressions or change in the users, and he concluded that high-dose DMT experiences were not transformative.

  Contrast that to people who experience near death. They typically demonstrate profound and long-lasting change such as becoming more altruistic, less materialistic, and more loving. Author and researcher Kevin Wil
liams notes that it takes an average of seven years for individuals to integrate the transformative effects of their NDE into daily life, and that these changes typically intensify rather than fade over the course of time.27 This was also substantiated in Pim van Lommel’s study of cardiac patients, in which he interviewed patients within five days of their resuscitation, two years later, and eight years later. He found the experiencers’ memories to be consistent throughout, and the transformative changes to be long lasting.

  I heard from a man named Scott, who wrote that he had a near-death experience in December 1997 as a result of an acute bacterial infection. He was in the middle of a company meeting when he suddenly became exhausted. He told a coworker who immediately offered to drive him home. He described what happened next:

  We headed home almost immediately, but I remember absolutely nothing until suddenly I was being loaded into an ambulance. My next image was me sitting with a loving God up in the corner of the emergency room, looking down on my body.

  I saw my wife and son at the foot of the bed and thought about how much they were still grieving and suffering after burying my brother-in-law just one month earlier. I sure didn’t want to add to their burden. When they called to me, I returned to my body as suddenly as I had left.

  This event changed my life completely. Fifteen years later, I still have a “fire in my bones” for the Lord! My first wife of thirty-one years divorced me because I wasn’t the guy I used to be. Instead of trying to climb the corporate ladder of success, I now feel moved to feed the homeless, work in food banks, and run a hospital, nursing home, and hospice ministry. I eat, work, play, sleep, and dream Jesus. I’m definitely not the guy I used to be—I’m better!

  —SCOTT, OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

  Although the myth of DMT’s ability to explain the NDE phenomenon has become widespread, it is based entirely on speculation. Clearly something else is going on that science has yet to uncover.

  WHEN A LIFE STORY GOES FURTHER THAN SCIENCE

  The more I understood the research, the less I understood about my survival.

  By the time my body was pulled from the river, my skin was purple, cold, and waxy. I had fixed and dilated pupils. I was not breathing and had no heartbeat. My companions, who are professional raft and kayak instructors as well as being EMT trained and experienced, believed me to be dead. They continue to claim they had little to do with my survival other than providing the hands through which God’s will was accomplished.

  I had taken my quest as far as medical science could go, but my life clearly went further. The NDE I had was definitely not a product of a dream or of my imagination. It was not a seizure or neurotransmitter-induced hallucination, and it was not the effect of my circumstances or of my brain naturally shutting down that current science could explain. I had experienced an outside-of-the-visible-universe, outside-of-known-natural-laws, out-of-the-body—which is to say, supernatural—event.

  Chapter 6

  CROSSING OVER AND COMING BACK

  “Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”

  —ROSSITER RAYMOND

  For ancient Greek and Roman sailors, the Pillars of Hercules, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, marked the edge of the known world. The pillars were said to bear the warning Non plus ultra—“nothing farther beyond.” The implied message was clear: The unknown is dangerous. Turn back before it’s too late.

  But you’re reading this book as an act of courage, and where the big questions are concerned, you’re not inclined to turn back. You want to see beyond the horizon of your life now. You want to know what to expect after you or a loved one passes from this earth. Or you may want to see how a personal experience like mine lines up with what you believe to be true based on scripture.

  Look at this book as a voyager’s report. In my near-death experience, I traveled past the horizon of my time on Earth, and now I’m telling you what I heard, saw, felt, and came to know. But it’s important for you to know that even though my report is based on personal experience, it does not stand alone.

  In this chapter we look at the reports of other “travelers,” from times past to the present. The fact is, countless examples of NDEs can be found in the historical records, and all the descriptions share striking similarities with those of modern-day accounts.

  Our current understanding of these encounters is due largely to the work of Drs. Raymond Moody and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, psychiatrists who were early pioneers in the study of NDEs. Through the work of Moody, Kübler-Ross, Peter Fenwick, Pim van Lommel, and many others, the clinical phenomenon of NDEs has now been well documented. Surprisingly, it has actually been found to be quite common, occurring in up to 18 percent of people who were declared “clinically dead” before resuscitation.1

  Think about it! This equates to millions of people who steadfastly claim to have had this sort of experience. And this doesn’t even consider the fact that most people who have this sort of supernatural experience never mention it to anyone.

  Perhaps skepticism of NDEs reflects a fear not unlike the ancient Greek and Roman fear of what lies beyond—beyond the pillars of death. Just as we now know that undiscovered oceans and continents waited beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we also know that God holds an eternity of goodness in store for us beyond the horizon of physical death.

  DEFINING THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

  The term “near-death experience” was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody in 19752 and describes a recognizable constellation of hyperintense and powerful perceptions, insights, and sensory experiences that occur in situations of death, near death, or other dire circumstances. What distinguishes an NDE from the common event of dying is that the person doesn’t stay physically dead or unconscious—the person returns from the apparent death to full consciousness, and often to full functioning. What an NDE suggests is that the journey between life and death is not always unidirectional.

  No one, least of all me, is proposing that our physical bodies won’t eventually die—after all, mortality is a fundamental part of the human experience. But for reasons we struggle to understand, some people die or come very close to dying but are then given a return ticket, extending their time on Earth.

  A UNIVERSAL HUMAN PHENOMENON

  If the NDE phenomenon is a universal human one, you’d expect accounts of these experiences to occur in all eras, and the world over. And that is the case. Although details and terminology vary slightly by culture, accounts of NDEs have been reported throughout the world, as far back as 1760 BC, and in the traditions of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Native Americans.3

  Plato’s Republic, written about 420 BC, was the first account of an NDE in Western literature. In this book, Plato tells the account of Er, who died in battle but revived on his funeral pyre. Er went on to tell others of his journey into the afterlife, which included many similarities to modern-day descriptions:

  With many other souls as his companions, Er had come across an awe-inspiring place with four openings—two into and out of the sky and two into and out of the earth….Meanwhile from the other opening in the sky, clean souls floated down, recounting beautiful sights and wondrous feelings….They reached a place where they could see a rainbow shaft of light brighter than any they had seen before….After this each soul was assigned a guardian spirit to help them through their life.4

  Although most of us weren’t taught this in Sunday school, it’s reasonable to understand several accounts in the Bible where people came back to life as NDEs (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17–21, Luke 7:12–15, John 11:1–44, Acts 9:36–41, Acts 20:9–10).

  In the first century after Christ, the apostle Paul wrote a classic report of an NDE. Perhaps expressing the limits of understanding and expression common to the experience, he chose to write about his experience in the third person: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the
body I do not know—God knows….[He] was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things” (2 Corinthians 12:2–4).

  Later in the same passage he calls what he heard “surpassingly great revelations” (12:7) that he wasn’t permitted to describe in full.

  Further Christian writings about NDEs include those of Gregory the Great, the sixth-century pope. In The Dialogues, Gregory describes more than forty other NDEs. For example, he recorded the firsthand account of Stephen, a prominent businessman who died while on a trip to Constantinople. You’ll see parallels between my account in the previous chapter and the account that follows:

  Three years ago, as you know, this same Stephen died in the virulent plague which devastated this city [Rome], in which arrows were seen coming down from the sky and striking people dead. A certain soldier in this city of ours happened to be struck down. He was drawn out of his body and lay lifeless, but he soon returned [to life] and described what befell him. At that time there were many people experiencing these things.

  He said that there was a bridge, under which ran a black, gloomy river, which breathed forth an intolerably foul-smelling vapor. But across the bridge, there were delightful meadows carpeted with green grass and sweet-smelling flowers. The meadows seemed to be meeting places for people clothed in white. Such a pleasant odor filled the air that the sweet smell by itself was enough to satisfy [the hunger of] the inhabitants who were strolling there. In that place each one had his own separate dwelling, filled with magnificent light. A house of amazing capacity was being constructed there, apparently out of golden bricks, but he could not find out for whom it might be. On the bank of the river there were dwellings, some of which were contaminated by the foul vapor that rose up from the river, but others were not touched at all.5