Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Full Text – with some Washington Post Comments₁

• These patients saw what comes after death. Should we believe them?
• Researchers have developed a model to explain the science of near-death experiences. Others have challenged it.
• Washington Post February 5, 2026
• By Mark Johnson
• Mark Johnson joined The Washington Post in July 2022 after 22 years at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he covered health and science. He wrote about the first person to survive rabies without vaccine, and reported on the first use of full gene sequencing to diagnose and treat a new disease.
• After she dropped to her knees outside her home in Midlothian, Virginia, suffocating, after she was lifted into the ambulance and told herself, “I can’t die this way,” and after emergency workers at the hospital cut the clothes off her to assess her breathing, Miasha Gilliam-El, a 37-year-old nurse and mother of six, blacked out.
• What happened next has happened to thousands who’ve returned from the precipice of death with stories of strange visions and journeys that challenge what we know of science. Last year, a team of researchers from Belgium, the United States and Denmark launched an ambitious effort to explain these experiences on a neurobiological level — work that is now being contested by a pair of researchers in Virginia.
• At stake are questions almost as old as humanity, concerning the possibility of an afterlife and the nature of scientific evidence — questions likely to take center stage at a conference of brain experts in Porto, Portugal, in April.
• “The next thing I knew, I was out of my body, above myself, looking at them work on me, doing chest compressions,” Gilliam-El said, recalling Feb. 27, 2012, the day she suffered a rare condition called peripartum cardiomyopathy. For reasons that aren’t fully understood, between the last month of pregnancy and five months after childbirth, a woman’s cardiac muscle weakens and enlarges, creating a risk of heart failure.
• Gilliam-El, who had given birth just three days earlier, recalled watching a doctor try to snake a tube down her throat to open an airway. She remembered staring at the machine showing the electrical activity in her heart and seeing herself flatline. Her breathing stopped.
• “And then it was kind of like I was transitioned to another place. I was kind of sucked back into a tunnel,” she said. “It is so peaceful in this tunnel. And I’m just walking and I’m holding someone’s hand. And all I’m hearing is the scripture, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’”
• While neuroscientists have discovered more and more about the inner workings of the brain in recent decades, a deep mystery still surrounds near-death experiences like Gilliam-El’s.
• Writing last year in the journal Nature Reviews Neurology, a research team led by Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the University of Liège in Belgium, synthesized some 300 scientific papers focusing on commonalities across the following experiences: viewing one’s body from the outside, journeying through a tunnel toward a brilliant light, and experiencing a deep sense of peace. The authors linked these experiences to specific changes in the brain, creating a pioneering model called NEPTUNE (neurophysiological evolutionary psychological theory understanding near-death experience).
• Bruce Greyson and Marieta Pehlivanova, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, responded with a sweeping critique of the NEPTUNE model in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
• While calling the model “an admirable strategy,” they wrote that aspects of such experiences cannot be explained solely by brain physiology, and they criticized the NEPTUNE authors for omitting evidence that did not support their ideas.
• Although this debate is taking place in the rarefied atmosphere of scientific journals and conferences, it is almost certainly one that has crossed the minds of most people.
• “This is not the digestive function of some lower life form we’re talking about here. These are implications that reach all of humanity,” said Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist and co-author of the 2011 book “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.”
• “Do we have some evidence?” he asked. “And how strong is that evidence that we have life after death, that our consciousness survives bodily death?” Long — who was not involved in either the NEPTUNE paper or the critique — said he has studied more than 4,000 near-death experiences.
• The NEPTUNE researchers cited several studies showing that about 10 to 23 percent of near-death experiences occur after a heart attack, 15 percent after a prolonged stay in intensive care and 3 percent after a traumatic brain injury. Others occur after electrocution, near drowning and complications during childbirth.
• “For most of them, it’s a life-transforming experience,” Martial said. “Typically, they are less afraid to die [afterward].” They tend to develop greater interest in spirituality, she said, and can become more empathetic to others.
• To create the NEPTUNE model, scientists examined changes in gas concentrations in blood vessels in the brain: the decreased oxygen and increased carbon dioxide that occur just before and during a cardiac arrest.
• They cited studies suggesting that sensations resembling out-of-body experiences may be generated in the temporoparietal junction, a high-level hub for processing sensory information and helping distinguish the self from others. Studies indicate that applying electric stimulation to this area, located behind and just above the ear, could trigger an out-of-body experience, they wrote.
• Folded into their analysis were observations about brain chemistry, including the nerve cells and chemical messengers that regulate mood, sleep and learning. Martial said the model is intended as a living document that can be revised as scientists learn more.
• But Greyson and Pehlivanova disputed key aspects of the model. They wrote that illusions triggered by electric stimulation are “nothing like the visions of deceased persons reported in [near-death experiences].” For example, one study reported inducing an illusion in which a patient felt the presence of a person behind them whom they could not see or hear.
• “This is not remotely comparable to the visions reported in many [near-death experiences] of identified deceased persons who are seen, heard, smelled, and touched,” wrote Greyson and Pehlivanova, who are, respectively, a professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences and a research assistant professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences.
• The two acknowledged that near-death experiences “are typically triggered by physiological events” but stressed that such events do not account fully for the experiences people have described. They faulted the NEPTUNE authors for dismissing evidence from patients’ near-death accounts and from hospital staff who have supported aspects of those accounts — for example, the number of people who were in the room during resuscitation.
• Scientists disagree on whether the stories patients tell constitute reliable scientific data.
• Near-death experiences have been described since antiquity, said Greyson. Researchers have been collecting and discussing accounts since at least 1892, when Swiss mountaineer and geologist Albert Heim discussed stories he’d collected since his own brush with death while climbing in the Alps.
• By their nature, these reports can be difficult to define and even harder to analyze with scientific rigor. In a 1983 paper, Greyson described a 16-item scale he developed for measuring accounts of near-death experiences and standardizing research into them.
• But the effort to impose rigor on the study of near-death experiences forces researchers into an uncomfortable zone that straddles the line between the scientific and the spiritual.
• “These stories are seductively powerful narratives that give hope to our deepest yearnings for consciousness beyond our death,” Kevin Nelson, an emeritus professor of neurology and retired chief of medical staff affairs at University of Kentucky HealthCare, wrote in an email. “I too have such hope, but with wax in my ears and science lashing me to the mast, I will not succumb to the siren’s song.” (Nelson was one of the authors of the NEPTUNE paper.)
• Greyson said the NEPTUNE researchers may dismiss the testimony of patients who have come close to dying “as not evidential, but the fact is that every scientific discovery begins with subjective observation that may eventually be corroborated by controlled experiment.”
• In addition to testing aspects of the NEPTUNE model, Greyson and Pehlivanova wrote that “it will also be important to remain open to other potential causes, whether currently unknown or not yet fully understood.”
• By necessity, most previous studies have involved researchers going back to patients after their near-death experiences to gather their accounts and medical records. But such retrospective studies are open to biases in how people remember such events after time has passed and how they have shared their accounts with others.
• However, Martial, the NEPTUNE researcher, said that she and three of her colleagues at the University Hospital of Liège are in the midst of a prospective study that involves tracking patients from the moment they are taken to the hospital’s resuscitation room. It will involve video footage recorded at the hospital as well as electroencephalograms that measure electrical activity in the brain.
• “When we die, this is a process — not just an event,” Martial said. “For example, during a cardiac arrest, we have a decrease of oxygen, which leads to a decrease of brain activity. But at some point, actually, we see an increase of electrical brain activity, and then we can observe a kind of flatline.”
• Gilliam-El, the nurse, remembered that her near-death experience ended when a powerful voice told her “Not yet,” and she felt herself return to her body. Everything looked blurry in the bright hospital room.
• She feared that if she told anyone what had happened, they wouldn’t believe her.
• What readers are saying
• The comments on the article about near-death experiences (NDEs) reflect a wide range of personal anecdotes and beliefs. Many commenters share their own NDEs, describing feelings of peace, encounters with light, and seeing deceased loved ones, which they find comforting and transformative. Some express skepticism, attributing these experiences to neurophysiological processes, while others argue for the existence of consciousness beyond the brain, citing researchers like Bruce Greyson who challenge the "dying brain" hypothesis. Overall, the comments reveal a mix of personal conviction, scientific curiosity, and philosophical reflection on the nature of life and death.
• This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
• Links:-
  → Bial Foundation: Behind and Beyond the Brain - End-of-life experiences
  → Nature - Martial, Etc - A neuroscientific model of near-death experiences
  → Greyson - A Neuroscientific Model of Near-Death Experiences Reconsidered
  → Nature - Arzy, Etc - Induction of an illusory shadow person
  → Kopel - Near-death experiences in medicine
  → Greyson - The near-death experience scale. Construction, reliability, and validity
  → Koch - Do not go gently into that good night: The dying brain and its paradoxically heightened electrical activity
  

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• Comments – 1,572
• What are your thoughts on the debate between the NEPTUNE model and its critics regarding the explanation of near-death experiences?
• Highlights
• The comments on the article about near-death experiences (NDEs) reflect a wide range of personal anecdotes and beliefs. Many commenters share their own NDEs, describing feelings of peace, encounters with light, and seeing deceased loved ones, which they find comforting and transformative. Some express skepticism, attributing these experiences to neurophysiological processes, while others argue for the existence of consciousness beyond the brain, citing researchers like Bruce Greyson who challenge the "dying brain" hypothesis. Overall, the comments reveal a mix of personal conviction, scientific curiosity, and philosophical reflection on the nature of life and death.
• I wonder if WaPo believes in an afterlife.
• They are about to find out.
• I was in ICU after a car accident in 1974. What I experienced was nothing like a "dream". My lung had collapsed and during the night it filled with blood and I stopped breathing. I was unconscious as this happened and then woke and watched as nurses and a doctor rushed to my bed, laid me down flat and started to insert an airway. I felt nothing. Then I was surrounded by intense blackness but it didn't feel dark. It felt like nothing else I've ever felt. There was light but it was...
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• As the WaPo flatlines I wonder if Mr Bezos will have a near-death experience. Sad that there's almost no reporting on the Post's situation on the WaPo website. Jeff is quietly shutting down a thorn in Mr Trump's side.
• At 15 years old I fell through a forward hatch on a sailboat and had a similar experience. I was floating through a tunnel of stars toward a light and felt the most wonderful feeling of peace and happiness. The floating felt as though I had shed a heavy coat and when I woke up, the euphoria stayed with me although I never told anyone about it. I'm 73 now and can still remember that amazing feeling and I'm not afraid of dying because I've been to where I will be going.
• What will WaPo write about the near death experience their paper is going through? Simply ignoring that 1/3 of their workforce was let go yesterday shows that readers cared more about the WaPo staff than they do.
• Um. The article touches on, but doesn't directly address, the claim that during near-death experiences people gain access to information they couldn't otherwise have. For instance, while "floating above" their bodies they notice a forgotten object on top of a tall cabinet---something that can't be noticed from the vantage point of a hospital bed.
• If true, and if this happens even ONCE, it disproved the "just a bunch of electrical fuzz in the brain" hypothesis....
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• I am a long time atheist, and so was my late husband. I assumed we have this one life to live, so make the best of it. But about 3 years after my husband died from cancer, our adult son was going through a rocky time and had come to stay with me for several months. During that time, I had several experiences where I was absolutely certain my husband was standing over me while I was reading in bed, or he was walking around the house. My son reported the same "visions." I wrote it off as...
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• As I get older, I've told people I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying. Mainly because there are many ways it's painful, or scary not being able to breathe. What I take from this article is even in the midst of a chaotic experience, the person who is dying has a calm about them and is able to remember details of what is happening without fear or pain. That is comforting.
• I was horribly ill, alone at home, with a fever of 104. During the worst period of the fever, I only remember my mom calling to me, and I could smell her cooking my favourite dish. I could not see her, it was complete darkness. Then it was suddenly light in front of me. I was surrounded by light. I woke up, and walked into the kitchen in anticipation of a delicious meal with mom. The kitchen was empty. My mother had actually passed away years ago.
• I will alway remember my...
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• A doctor taught me this death talk. We dont know where we come from. We dont know where we go, its a mystery. And people gather when we are born and when we die. I like to think death is a birth in the opposite direction. Going back where we came from. Its a mystery where we come from and a mystery where we go. To me, I believe the people with near death experiences. Since people who have this experiences dont die all the way. One can only guess what happens next.
• Near-death experiences. Of course, you have those often when you work at the Washington Post and Jeff Bezos is your boss.
• As a WP subscriber, I have them too.
• I had a near-death experience when I was 30. Angels surrounded me, and I could see all of my past life on a screen. When my pastor came to the hospital to pray for me, he told me, "God doesn't want you to die yet." I went to sleep, the first in many nights, and didn't wake up until 72 hours later. When I did wake up, I was healed. Don't poo-poo those who speak of such an experience.
• I’m prepared for whatever happens, as long as Trump doesn’t make a guest appearance.
• When I met my wife she had already spent 20 years as an oncology nurse. She is a very empathetic person and kind as the day is long. I told her I always wondered about the after life question. Since she had seen so much death (the reason she left oncology for dialysis) did she believe in the after life. She said absolutely. She sat through hundreds of deaths and listened to the words of those who were dying as they talked about what they were seeing. She absolutely believes.
• Rally today at the Washinont Post HQ in DC to support the 30% of Post staff laid off yesterday.
• 12-1 PM 1301 K St Washington DC.
• I hope the trade is worth it for Bezos: Rockets for Truth and Democracy.
• This is comparable to what Musk and DOGE did to the Federal Workers, but on a smaller scale. Always a competition to the bottom with Bezos and Musk.
• What about all the people with non- near death experiences. I was brought back after flat-lining for 90 seconds. Nothing! It was like coming out of anesthesia. No visions. No tunnel. No out-of-body experience. So, for s of those out there who feel they experienced something, I bet there are an equal number like me who didn’t.
• Not a near death experience but I did get a hug from my mother the day after she passed. I was lying on my side in bed reading and I suddenly became aware of a soft warm presence behind me. Then an arm came around me and I was squeezed with the most loving, warm hug I have ever experienced. It felt of pure love and peace. I think my mother was trying to say thank you for being her caregiver throughout her very long illness and was telling me she’s in a beautiful peaceful place now....
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• I am posting this to you all from the afterlife and, here where I am, there are no Republicans.
• My best friend was murdered. I had 3 dreams about him after his death. I remember the 3rd one. I was standing at the top of his stairs. He floated towards me. I kept calling him, "Jim, Jim, Jim!" He did not look at me. As he neared me he turned and floated towards a light. He turned and waved to me. He did not look at me. The dream ended. I believe that my mind tried to soothe me. Some people feel it was a visitation.
• “Typically, they are less afraid to die [afterward].”
• I think Mark Twain had the right idea. When asked on his deathbed if he was afraid of dying, he said “I was dead for billions of years before I was born, and it never caused me the slightest inconvenience.”
• Bruce Greyson is an MD, a leading researcher in the field of NDE's, and an author. He has often refuted the "NDE's are only a product of the dying brain" argument very comprehensively, by discussing accounts of nearly dead and unconscious patients having severe out-of-body ("OBE") experiences where they recount, in excruciating detail, the words, actions, movements, and conversations of the entire staff treating them, all while they were essentially "dead" and completely unconscious,...
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• As someone who's been a scientist for over 40 years, I seen many a time when scientists refuse to believe in something, not because improper data collection methods were used or the data did not support the conclusion being stated but simply because they didn't want to accept the conclusion. Areas like ESP (which has been extensively researched by credible institutions such as Duke University and Maimonides Hospital with overwhelmingly positive results) and near death experience would...
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• When I was five, my grandmother came to see me. For some strange reason, there was a roiling stream between us covered by a wooden footbridge. On the other side, on the end of the bridge, stood my grandma.
• For some reason, her side was full of flowers and glorious color and light. My side was dark, gray, and misty. She said my name and said she had come to say goodbye to me. I told her I wanted to come with her and tried to step on the...
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• This is a question that cannot really be answered. Those who believe in an afterlife will see evidence of that and those who embrace science will see a neurochemical process.
• *OT*. I’m still looking for an article here about Bezos cutting A THIRD of the WAPO staff…nothing. Stick a fork in this paper, it’s done! And so am I..
• Sadly, the Washington Post is now near death. Soon, all will be darkness. No light... no peace... only darkness.
• Ironically, i just finished Journey of Souls....which documents thousands of NDE's and people's experiences after 'dying'. They're all VERY similar, across countries and nationalities. Like, eerily similar. How do all of these people report a very similar process after you die? Like extremely detailed?
• When a MD has studied 4,000 cases of NDE and finds a pattern, you listen. Personally experienced my mother "passing" being resuscitated and her asking "why?". I was in my 20's and haven't feared what's after since.
• In 1981 I had a Near Death Experience (NDE) when I worked on an offshore oil rig in California. Broke my femur and severed my femoral artery. I went into shock and flatlined. It was an astounding experience. I never said anything for years because of fear of being ridiculed. After my NDE, I am not afraid to die. It’s just another state of consciousness. Since then, I have been a student of quantum neurology - how consciousness, thoughts and memories work at the quantum scale....
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• Thank you for including the criticisms of Bruce Greyson and others in this story. More standard journalism would have been just to present the NEPTUNE model and say something like “Science now can explain near death experiences!” But this is too important a question to explore without looking at different sides of the debate.
• The WaPo times frustrates me with its anodyne coverage of Trump, but this is one small example of how it can be a fine newspaper. It is...
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• Here’s a synchronicity: Three AM: I dream I’m traveling at great speed through the darkness towards a distant light. When I realize I’m not alone I fall away and awake. I’m not disturbed but I get up and check the house and go out and lock the car. Nice, serene night, stars out. It was also at that time that my sister, to whom I was close, was dying. I’d did not connect the dream with her death at the time. Plenty of other folks in my family have died and I’ve not had such a dream...
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• I recently told a good friend, who is a reassuring optimist, that I had decided that even if it may be a false hope, it is better than no hope at all. This happened after a well- known person said that hope had helped her, but it better be true hope. I thought about this for a few years. After all, hope is the optimism that something good will take place, and it is not usually guaranteed. I had some hopes dashed, but the hope itself pulled me through some tough times, and all times are...
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• I died last year after a cardiac arrest. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I didn’t even know it happened until months later when someone finally told me. I was very disappointed and actually somewhat shattered I saw NOTHING; I cannot explain why that was so earth shattering but it still really bothers me a year later. I guess I didn’t see fire so that’s at least reassuring.
• I was with her until she started hearing biblical verses. I doubt that is part of the near death experience Muslims or Hews experience.
• I don't consider mine a "near" death experience; I died. It was a death experience. I resent it being called "near" death because that implies that what i saw, felt and smelled wasn't real.
• It WAS real.
• I had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, in which blood and etc flooded through my body. The pain was excruciating. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 47.
• Like others, I also floated above my body, looking down at myself on the table as about 8 medical...
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• My father was a very down to earth, simple, non-churchgoing, hardworking man who was also very overweight, and smoked 3 or 4 packs a day. One day he shared that while taking a nap he was drawn to a beautiful light and he wanted very much to go there as it was so enticing and beautiful. But he heard a voice say it was not time yet and sent him back to where he was. This was back in the early 70's and he did not share it with anyone else but my mother as it would have been "embarrassing". He...
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• What is there to gain from lying to a researcher about such an experience?
• Somehow another mystery like death. Is remembering our birth. Is that most children at some point have a childhood amnesia. Only having a few childhood memories. I did read a woman magazine article that said if you ask a child, before childhood amnesia kicks in, to tell you about thier birth, and see what the child says. Around 3 I asked my son if he remembered his birth. He described everything in detail. That I was crying. His dad roughly gave him a bath. He even described the clothing he...
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• I’ve never been a religious person, but I am a spiritual one. I have tremendous respect for the scientific community, but like the human experience, there is much we don’t know, and as time passes, we learn more. I am a firm believer that there is more to the human experience beyond the brain. I’ve had several OOB experiences, and while not the same or life-changing as those who relay these stories, they reaffirmed to me that there is more beyond the physical reality. I’m not into the God...
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• My wife died of suicide in 2010. About a year later, I had a dream of her sitting across a table from me, all in white, calmly letting me know things were OK. Suddenly she leaped across the table and grabbed my hand and said, "I'm so sorry!" I could feel her hand in mine, smell her hair, looked right at her eyes, a voice from somewhere said "no, no, we told you, you can't do that," and the dream abruptly ended. I have never, ever, had a dream, good or bad, that visceral and brief and...
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• I believe in the afterlife. My mother died 3 years ago, and I have felt her presence repeatedly. When I tell her I need to know she can hear me, an obscure song that loved started playing on the radio several times.
• The journalist at WAPO currently having a near death experience for the fate of their newspaper.
• The surgeon told me that my wife was in the final level of coma when she came into the surgery. He was going to call it but because of her age he decided to remove the subdural hematoma. After the surgery he explained she might never come out of the coma, and even then, a vegetative state was likely. He went to check on her in recovery and she was fully conscious, and trying to remove the endotracheal tube. Three days later she came home. The surgeon was semi-retired from UCLA Medical Center where had taught neurosurgery for decades. He told me that he had never seen this personally.
• My wife had no NDE or anything else she could remember. I keep asking for a story so we could do Oprah. No deal.
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• Twice I have experienced OOBE that were validated by the person laying next to me. I have observed my college roommate driving home remotely.
• Yes, I am sure almost everyone will call that crazy. How can that be? I do not know, but I could recount details of my college roommate's travel that would be otherwise unknowable. And the two people lying next to me during the OOBE told me to 'get out of their bodies.'
• It is not something...
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• The moment my husband died in a hospital, I woke up in my nearby hotel room with an incredible feeling of peace, never felt before or since. There is something after death.
• It seems impossible that an article on this topic could be written without reference to Elisabeth Kubler Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist and author of the seminal book "On Death and Dying." These are not new ideas, but rather an extension of her ground breaking work.
• I've had a near death experience twice-30 years apart in the ER. Both experiences involved floating up above my body, seeing medical staff working frantically to save me, then turning up to float through a beautiful warm tunnel and seeing loving relatives who communicated with me telepathically and in both cases told me it was not my time yet.
• But the feeling was so warm and peaceful. Last year I sat in hospice with both my Mom and my Uncle. Before they died,...
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• The Washington Post is near death … but no word of that anywhere to be seen in its articles!
• I am a person who believes in science, but also in spirituality. I think both may be true regarding death. Science is restricted only to what mankind knows. That seems pretty limited. And spirituality is not evidence-based. So, why not accept that both may be at play when we pass?
• As an agnostic RN with some 50 years of clinical experience, I’m on the fence on this one. On the one hand, I’m skeptical of any kind of conscious afterlife. On the other hand, I have questions.
• I could easily dismiss these near death experiences as the product of an hypoxic, dying brain and resulting neurochemistry. But a single commonality in these accounts causes me to question this, namely, the experience of looking down at one’s own body and remembering,...
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• I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences—those stories where someone is declared gone, or nearly so, and comes back with something profound to say about what they felt, saw, or understood.
• What strikes me is how similar many of these stories are, even across different times and cultures. A sense of peace. A feeling of being outside the body. Encounters with light, or with something they struggle to put into words. A deep conviction that what they experienced was...
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• Wait long enough and you'll know for yourself. Until then, don't dwell on the inevitable.
• In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger is a must read for anyone interested in this topic.
• The people who wear crosses but hate every non white person will eat this up
• I had an out of body experience in the grocery store. One of my children was very ill, I was in under unbearable stress and agonizing grief. I floated up to the ceiling looking down on myself, wishing I could die. I told myself that my other children needed me and forced myself back down into my body.
• Our brain does very strange things when we are overcome with stress and fear. Sleep paralysis causes hallucinations of alien abduction in people with no mental illness. A...
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• My mother told me of an experience she had when 5-7 years old in Ireland c. 1920CE. At dusk she was about to open their front door. In those days houses still were mostly with a thatched roof. Across the way she saw an orange light come up through a neighbor's roof. Then it formed a small orb once free from the thatch and shot directly up like a bullet and disappeared in the sky. She anxiously asked her grandmother what was that orange thing. Without a word she ran over to that house and...
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• About 55 years ago, I had the weirdest experience. I might have died in my sleep. No tunnel, but I ascended above the precise location of my building. It was the same place, but from another time, filled with wild animals living in harmony. No one spoke to me, but I felt what I can only describe as what the saints called ecstasy, a feeling of being as one with the universe. After a while, I fell down to earth again and was afraid of crashing. I woke up with my pillow wet with tears, but...
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• WAPO is having that experience right now.
• I had an experience when I was baptized as an adult that my own minister has never experienced and as a scientist, I still cannot explain. I had my eyes closed (in our tradition, we are basically sprinkled not immersed) and saw/felt a surging light and a sense of peace. I thought maybe it was somehow sunshine so I opened my eyes, but it wasn’t sunshine and the light/presence was still there. Other members of the Congregation were all around and either gently laying a hand on my shoulders or...
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• It's amazing how spooked materialists are by the idea that there may be ghosts in the universe.
• How does the near-death of a great newspaper affect subscribers?
• Olver Sacks wrote that he didn't believe in the afterlife. He wrote that test pilots who suffered hypoxia during high velocity test flights all had the tunnel of light experience. He believed it was a simple neurological reaction to the hypoxia. Perhaps it the way a brain is designed to protect the conscious as it dies.
• But I don't recall people who are gruesomely tortured and survive saying anything beyond the fear and pain - because they are not suffering hypoxia before...
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• Religion is simply a tool we use to cope with things we don't understand.
• It was stated that a near-death event can transform someone's life. My life was transformed on one of the saddest days of my life when I was walking into a hardware store to have a key duplicated. So mundane. A five-second act of common courtesy and a friendly smile from a stranger, who then went on his way, changed everything for me. Everything. I feel so lucky that the here-and-now, my life on this truly beautiful and weird planet, is miracle enough for me.
• I have read nearly every account in Dr. Long's rather massive archive of NDE stories. I've read all of the stories in the IANDS archive as well, listened to hundreds of hours of YouTube interviews of people who have experienced an NDE and personally know 8 people who have had the experience. At this point, it is my belief that anyone who denies the reality that our consciousness/soul continues after death is either ignorant of the evidence, or being willfully/obstinately blind to that...
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• My Mom described her death experience as a bright light and seeing her mother and others telling her no, to go back, it wasn't time for her yet. She said it was very peaceful and warm. She felt happy. The doctors brought her back then and a few times more over the years. When she did die, my 2 sisters and I were with her and formed a circle holding hands with her. She died so beautifully and peacefully. A glow passed over her face as she went and she had a faint smile. Her face became...
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• If there was no mystery in life, what a drab world it would be.
• It's near death not death. No report ever of a person "dead" ie with rigor mortis, returning to life.
• LOL. How appropriate that this article runs today . . . . when the Post itself is having a near death experience . . . . . even if it is by it's own hand.
• Bezos Why????? You could keep the Post going with your zillions. How did u mismanage this gem of a paper ? Or was something else afoot? Like Trump.!!!!!!!!
• more concerned with the daily near death experience of our democracy as well as journalism at bezos WP.
• Have they done research on people from other cultures? Interviewed people whose religion doesn't include belief in an afterlife?
• Freedom day. 2/15/2026 when my WAPO cancellation is effective! First subscribed in 83 and can’t bear watching the continued destruction of this once great newspaper.
• I suspect being dead is exactly like pre birth.
• There are many things that we experience, that science cannot understand. Many are hesitant to discuss them because we think that we'll be taken for crazy. I've had people describe what happened in the middle of the night at home when their twin died in a hospital. It's too specific to be coincidence. I can tell if a house or building has a negative energy because of what might have happened on the past. My daughter has the same issue. There are building that I've refused to go into,...
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• My mother passed away in 2006. She was 91 and had been unresponsive for a couple of days. Suddenly, she sat up in the hospital bed, opened her eyes and exclaimed as she stared off in the distance, “wow! Look at that! It’s beautiful. Wow! Look at that!” After the 20 or so seconds she lay her head back down and was again unresponsive. She died about 5 hours later. At her funeral an old man we didn’t know said it was a vision of Heaven. His wife had had a similar experience the day she died. I...
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• The Post is itself now in the tunnel, holding hands with some guy with fat ankles.
• Decades ago I was standing on a trap door over a flight of stairs to the basement, in the back porch/entry way of a very old house. I was repotting some plants on a workbench surface along the outer wall of the porch. The trap door let go, and I was (of course) quickly moving straight down. At that moment, 'I' was above myself, witnessing the entire process. I calmly and clearly viewed myself in the beginning, middle and end stages of the fall (my arms smoothly entended straight above me,...
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• I had a ruptured jejunum, and many hours elapsed before I could get corrective surgery. Following the surgery, the surgeon told my wife I had a 50/50 chance of survival. That night, I had what I believe was a near death experience. I was walking through a tunnel. It was a pleasant experience and it opened up to a scene that had great beauty and colors that I cannot describe. As I approached the end of the tunnel, a voice spoke to me saying, "Go back Mark. It's not yet your time". I...
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• My dad had a near-death experience during the third of three surgeries (within a period of mere weeks). The surgeries had nothing to do with his heart or his brain. He told me of being above the operating table and watching the doctor and staff work on him. I don't remember if he spoke of a tunnel, or a light, or seeing deceased family. This was close to 50 years ago. He said he no longer feared death. Maybe scientists shouldn't put so much effort trying to figure this out, just let it be...
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• I had a bad hangnail once. As I collapsed on the floor and felt life slipping away, a short, bald figure emerged from the darkness that was closing in all around me. It was Jeff Bezos! He took me by the hand and led me to his wife's plastic surgeon, urging me to buy an enormous pair of rubber lips. No, I said, but I will buy the Epstein files if you've got 'em. His face darkened and became angry, and he gestured --- and I was back in my body, the paramedics having removed the hangnail...
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• RIP Washington Post. If by chance WP has a NDE, please publish ASAP.
• Remember what life was like for you before you were born?
• "We are stardust....." .....submicroscopic masses in an infinitely vast universe. Muse all you want but be assured that we are clueless as to what it's all about.
• I am a firm believer in death after life.
• At age 19, was alone when I had a NDE from a rapid onset of infection; was not in a medical setting and was deeply changed in ways as described here. Spirituality strengthened, career in Chaplaincy. Like the RN, it was years before I ever told anyone -seemed too strange- and years before I even had a name, NDE. Surprised, knowing in the moment that in youth this body was succumbing, there was complete absolute surrender, it was suddenly perfect to be dying, traveled peacefully and was...
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• As a physician, I was always skeptical of patients describing wierd “ visions “ after a near death experience like seeing a “ light at the end of a tunnel “.
• Much to my shock, years ago, my uncle had a cardiac arrest and fortunately was resuscitated. My uncle was not the type to lie. He described to me seeing “ a bright light at the end of a tunnel”.
• Obviously I can’t explain this phenomenon however these types of “visions” are very real and...
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• Before I die I hope to experience life after Trump.
• I had a cerebral aneurysm with rupture. I did die and was resuscitated. Later I made a miraculous recovery. For my death experience, I was in a wonderful place. There was fire, brimstone and an ocean of lava… Apparently I was destined to take the place over and was returned so a guy with goat legs and a red complexion could finish his tenure…. Nah, no memory of the event at all.
• From what I read in this WaPo entity is that it definitely is on life support. "Democracy dies in darkness "...... Indeed.
• My doctor told me I dropped dead five weeks after the incident, that's how long my amnesia lasted. The only way I knew something happened was a picture my son took of me in the cardiac care unit. As for the cardiac arrest, I have no memory of it. All I know is when my memory came back my first thought was what was I missing from where I had been. I felt homesick for it.
• A powerful voice told her 'not yet' is what caught my attention. I didn't have a near-death experience. I had a dream, so absolutely vivid it could have been reality. It was of the impending death of someone I loved deeply.... still do, and as I ran calling his name, a man told me he "isn't here yet". About a year or so later, he was there.
• It's also been documented that there are small children having the memories of someone long past or knowing a language...
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• A very close friend described to me her out of body experience when she’d been resuscitated when she was under general anesthesia during cancer surgery. She indicated to me that she later described everything she saw the operative team do to save her. Needless to say, her accurate description freaked out the operative team.As a critical care nurse for many years , I did once have a patient who described in detail his near death out of body experience to me in accurate detail. I’ve followed,...
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• While I am okay with reuniting with some relatives/friends in the afterlife, I am more concerned about reuniting with my dog's and cats...
• Just as we humans are getting more and more removed from nature, so we are being indoctrinated into not believing in the spirit world. My ancestors took spirts and angels for granted. I grew up in an old haunted farmhouse. We accepted lights going on and off at random times and voices and activity going on at night while we were in bed. Frankly, I think people who refuse to accept that there is a spirit world are missing out
• I want to state clearly that I did not experience what is commonly called a near-death experience. What happened to me was simply a strange, disturbing, and deeply impactful event that does not align with my beliefs.
• In March 2016, as a very young father, I was bedridden with an extremely high fever for an entire weekend. Two doctors came to see me. Without performing a real examination, they concluded it was a severe case of the flu.
• My wife, busy caring for...
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• Speaking of death, why are there no stories about how Jeff Bezos just KILLED the Washington Post yesterday by laying off nearly all of the remaining staff of reporters? The paper's signature line, before Bezos, was 'democracy dies in darkness.' As he was willing to see this happen as demonstrated by his ingratiating behavior toward the president, the death knell has rung for this once fine publication. Bezos obviously knows that having investigative reporting is not in his best interests....
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• First you fire the reporters, then you print National Inquirer genre stories.
• Is wapo itself experiencing NDE thanks to Bezos-Krupp?
• Sebastian Junger’s latest book, In My Time of Dying, is an excellent deep dive into this subject. Based on his own experience, he dissects call the theories and… comes to no hard conclusions. But it’s a great read and terrific summation of all the evidence out there both for and against afterlife.
• The truth is you don't have to have a near-death experience to have an out-of-body experience.
• Once I blacked out after a final thought when I was drowning, was pulled out, and apparently helped pull out another. I don't know what I did after I was saved because that time is missing and I only became conscious later. What part of my brain was operating when I helped save another? Is the missing time recoverable?
• If people want to learn what comes after death, they should just ask the remaining employees of the Washington Post.
• Near death experiences are NOT dead experiences. People are having subjective experiences during physical trauma. Our brain generates complex compelling images during dreams because it is a different physiological state than being awake. Taking these NOT dead subjective experiences' content as revealing an objective reality is the same mistake as taking the content of a dream as revealing objective reality. You can use it to explore your unconscious mind perhaps, but neither deliver any...
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• I was going to cancel my subscription today but then saw this article. I'll keep my subscription going for now in hopes that maybe Bezos will sell the Post to someone with integrity. I found this article intriguing. And maybe because I hope I will meet up with my husband in an afterlife, I prefer the researchers who criticize Neptune. How do the Neptune researchers account for those who see things that could not be seen unless the patient had separated from the body?
• I maintained a .99 a month for one year just to remain part of the amazing community of readers who “enliven” the comment section! There is life on the way to death here in the comments! It occurred to me that Jeff could have given WaPo to his wife who had no financial pressures to interfere with the passion for truth that was at the heart of this storied institution.
• Jeff you need to sell. Consider Win McCormick from the New Republic. Wealth and aligned with good journalism...
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• In 1968 in Vietnam I was lying on a Gurney alone in a Quonset hut at the 95th evec hospital running a high fever while shaking and freezing cold.
• I don’t know how long this went on. At some point I left my body and looked down on myself. Then I went into a bright light where I experienced
• Pure joy and happiness. I don’t know how much time passed. I woke up on a cot in a hospital tent.
• So sad that a Billionaire can’t share his wealth with his workers.! I fail to understand such selfishness, Jeff.
• Is this for real? Is this where WaPo has gone to cover up firing a third of real journalists? Straight to La la land. Get our your ouija boards, folks.
• The important part of Near Death Experiences is the NEAR. When someone comes back to life after being dead for 2 weeks, then I will be very interested in hearing what it was like.
• Near death experiences are induced by changes in the neurophysiological body. Once scientists can safely replicate those changes, near death experiences will be proven to be simply illusions.
• I have never heard of somebody coming back from a near death experience and saying "My religious beliefs were all wrong! This is the true god." People see what they want to see, which means it's all nonsense.
• No matter what causes it, what it actually is - I take comfort from the fact that it was perceived as peaceful. Every person will eventually die. We can all hope for a good death.
• "After death"? The headline is wrong.
• As a scientist friend of mine once told another friend, "What you had was a near death experience, not a death experience. No one has come back from being 'dead,' not just apparently dead."
• It makes a certain amount of sense that if your consciousness detaches from the physical world as we know it, you would feel a sudden sense of peace. After all, what is there to worry about? Our worries, fears, anxieties, and physical pain are all based on what we experience in the physical world. Once you are no longer a part of that, those stressors go away. Although some people relate it to Christian scripture, this is the basic tenet of Buddhism as well. Your consciousness rejoins the...
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• My father had a massive heart attack in 1983 and was air-lifted 60 miles to a hospital in Fresno. I got the call and my sister in law drove me there from San Francisco. We somehow managed to get there before my mother. I was allowed into his room as he was coming to ( I really don’t know what treatment he received…). But he was absolutely euphoric - his face full of light and joy. Not his Scorpio nature. He told me he had been heading toward this glorious light but then was told it wasn’t...
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• A former neigbor told me of a "visit" she had with a childhood playmate of mine after he died of AIDs as an adult. He called her by the nickname he gave her as a cheeky kid and told her that he was stuck in Purgatory and needed her prayers to get to heaven.
• So, she added him to her daily prayers and one day she was "visited" by singing angels celebrating because David had entered heaven that day.
• Her children thought she was nuts,...
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• I doubt we will ever know for certain. A friend asked me if I think we miss people when we pass. Resoundingly, I said, “nope!” I told him to think about it. If, when you die you do see and mingle with friends and family that passed before you, you will be too busy to miss people and you will know that someday you will again see those you left behind.
• As a human being, I'm intrigued to speculate about what the implications of near death experiences in medical patients might be regarding the existence of the afterlife. However, as a clinical health psychologist whose wife is a critical care physician working in the ICU, there is no doubt in my mind that medical patients undergoing surgery and other medical procedures often report having independently confirmable experiences that are impossible to explain via ordinary sensory or...
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• Well, I think where one stands may be determined by how heavily inculcated one is by religious teachings before adulthood. Having said that, I confess that I had twelve years of Catholic schooling before breaking free of it. I still believe in the things that matter, like doing good, knowing right from wrong and doing right even when it's hard, caring for others, and the existence of a Supreme Being. My wife is even less religious, but she had a near-death experience fifty years ago...
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• When are we going to acknowledge there are some things that are beyond understanding or scientific explanation.
• We stop. No past, no future. Do good while you can.
• My experience happened on Stony Island Avenue in Chicago one hot August night circa 1981/82 while riding my bicycle. I was in my early twenties. I didn’t see the car; it came out of nowhere. What happened afterwards could have only taken seconds but it seemed like eternity. All I remember is seeing the scenery tumbling as if I were airborne. I then had the sensation that I was accelerating outwards through a tunnel of light. The only thing I could compare it to was seeing what happens when...
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• I wonder what Trump and his sycophants will see when they're about to die? Instead of loved ones, will they see their victims crying, "You hurt me!" "You lied about me!" "You killed me!" ?? I wonder if there's a way to measure that.
• The human brain evolved from earlier brain models over a period of billions of years. Its neural network is quite effective in allowing we humans, some of us, to survive in a chaotic world. The body supports the brain. When the body malfunctions the brain can enter a dreamlike state that comforts the dying process. Why should the process be unpleasant? Is this all supernatural? Not necessarily. Though many people would prefer that explanation. In the end what is happening requires...
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• I had an NDE right after a traumatic brain injury when I was a teenager. I could see my body trapped in the car, which was under water.
• I felt very calm, peaceful, as if my body was just a suit of clothing that I’d dropped on the floor, but I heard something and was suddenly back in my body and I knew that I had to get out of that car, and what I had to do to get out.
• I did. I survived. I have sometimes wondered if seeing your body...
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• I had one of these experiences when I was a young teen. I was unconscious and not breathing after hitting my head hard. Through the pitch black I watched myself through some kind of ethereal purple light, slowly drifting away from myself on the ground while people raced around me frantically, unsure what to do. Total and complete peace, no other thoughts until a sudden panic I was getting farther and farther away from the boy on the ground, and just like that, in a flash I was back in my...
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• It was a cold and rainy evening in January 1999. I was notified that my dad had a massive heart attack and had been taken from his retirement community to his local hospital. I went to bed; nothing I could do many hours and a long flight away. About 2AM I sat bolt upright in bed and said "Bye Daddy, see your over there." I did not see him, but was aware of a presence. 5 minutes later, the phone rang; my sister calling to say the ER
• doctor reported his death. "Yes, I...
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• What's overlooked here is that the only input is from those who came back.
• They need to hear from the ones who completed the journey. Now, THAT will be revelatory. Until then, it's all mere supposition,
• I've done my share of wrong in this life, and made many tragic mistakes. I'll spend eternity reading articles about hateful illiterate bimbos wearing glitter maga hats and jackets.
• My mother had a near death experience after having a series of cardiovascular events while in the hospital. She saw “a nurse from Hell,” complete with devil type features; the people who were resuscitating her put a sheet of ice in her bed and proceeded to torture her while doing CPR, leaving her hands and feet bruised by her account. Obviously she didn’t tell anyone about this because she thought it meant she was going to Hell, but she did become terrified of death. She told me about this...
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• These patients saw what comes after death. Should we believe them?
• No, because if they survived to tell it means they didn't die, not even slightly.
• Near death experiences are experiences of the first stages of the physical dying process, not experiences of "life after death."
• "Life is enjoyable. Death, is peaceful. It's the transition between the two that I'm afraid of".
• -- Isaac Asimov, who died of AIDS in 1992 from a tainted blood transfusion
• Human beings are the only animals (that we know of) that are conscious of their own mortality and can anticipate their deaths, and what might come after. I do not believe in an afterlife, because there is no evidence for it, nor do I see why there *should* be...
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• People really want life after death. We only have crude understanding of how the brain works in the living, especially when we get to topic of consciousness, so for all we know this is just natural response to a dying brain. These stories, including in the article, are similar to how many people describe psychedelic trips off LSD or psilocybin, and even people who meditate at a high level. So will continue to be a skeptic.
• Death means death. There is nothing thereafter.
• Some human beings hate the idea that 'This is It'.
• If near death experiences point to an afterlife in which some essence of our being survives death, that experience would transcend our ordinary, material existence. To try to understand that experience in terms of ordinary, material processes would be self-defeating, wouldn't it?
• While the people here have come back from near-death experiences, nobody in human history has ever come back from an actual death experience and reported what that’s like. Until someone does, we can only speculate whether life or some form of consciousness exists after actual death, no matter what someone might experience during the process of dying.
• Once we understand what consciousness is (and we don't yet), we will not find answers. Some scientists have suggested that quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain are responsible for creating consciousness. Once we are in the realm of the 'quantum', all the usual macro chemical/biological/electrical explanations are insufficient. I'd keep an open mind. There is plenty we do not yet understand.
• With no way to verify these experiences scientifically and objectively, I would say that these are the unconscious grasping at experiences that they have in their mind. The lady hearing someone recite the biblical passage is especially suspect. She is most likely a religious person who has memorized passages. To think that any higher power would recite a passage from a book written by men, even if divinely inspired, in English stretches credibility.
• There is so much of life that is difficult to comprehend. That we exist as we do and have an awareness of our existence is mind blowing. Never lose sight of the wonder of life itself and treat it with respect and compassion.
• As Bezos kills The Washington Post in order to pander to Trump, the fascist, I wonder if he ever considers what his legacy will be.
• Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
• Voltaire
• The Neptune study reflects an almost desperate effort to hang on to a simplistic biological reductionism, as if the self, and consciousness, is reducible to the organic brain. Brain cells are constantly being shed and renewed, and if this reductionism were true we would have ceased to exist many times in our lifetime. To confuse NDE accounts with biological, chemically-induced hallucinations requires a certain kind of intellectual dishonesty that refuses to respect the clinical evidence...
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• The question is, is the mind and the brain the same or separate things. Meaning does our self aware consciousness exist separate from the physical brain? Quantum physics opens vast new areas of exploration about the meaning of existence. Physics shows nothing is created or destroyed - it just changes form.
• I once had a physician who had extensively studied and recorded people’s near death experiences. She always emphasized the point that in about 20% of her cases, patients reported the inverse of the conventional narrative. For them, their NDEs were terrifying and fearsome.
• Go to non-Western and non-Muslim countries. Select places that have wildly different death stories. See what those people report .
• My favorite god/death scene in movies is Grace and Frankie. Played by Jane Fonda and Lilly Tomlin and Dolly Parton as God. So Grace and Frankie get electrocuted together die and the god Dolly gives them the choice of coming back. They both return. You can Google the scene on youtube, its really cute. So many people constantly die. I read in LA alone its a massive amount. Flopping over in our bird fountain, on the floor at a store.They have an office just for getting rid of belongings with...
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• In 1989, I was vacationing in Hawaii while my mother was in India. She had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months earlier. One night, around 3:00 a.m., I woke up suddenly with an intense and unexplained awareness of her. The feeling stayed with me, and for the next two days I found myself thinking about her constantly, without understanding why.
• When I returned home, I sat alone in the car for several minutes, overwhelmed by a deep sinking feeling that I couldn’t quite name. I...
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• When these experiences key into sectarian religious beliefs (biblical quotes), that is evidence they are based in the brain itself.
• Developments in physics over the last 100 years and particularly, in recent decades, has been stymied by a glaring incongruity; Einstein's theories of Relativity - a remarkable, penetrating insight into the nature of spacetime - is incompatible with quantum theory; a collection of ideas which render some essential aspects of quantum reality predictable while, revealing others not only contradicting Relativity, a mechanical view of the universe but also, what seemed the basic tenets of...
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• NDE can be recreated in the lab. Christians tend to have NDE that fit their version of the afterlife, while Muslims tend to have their version.
• NDE is best explained as a dying brain hallucinating.
• 10 years ago this coming July I experienced an ascending aortic dissection and thoracic aneurism. I survived emergency surgery and 10 years later feel great. The events leading up to my surgery are vivid right up to where I was administered anesthesia and everything went dark. 10.5 hours in surgery, and another 24 hours on a ventilator before coming to. Mind you it felt like only seconds after going under the anesthesia. During that time my corroded artery dissected and my heart stopped on...
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• As the body’s systems are breaking down, the body is flooded with many chemicals. A flood of endorphins is a well-documented phenomenon. The consistency of the reports suggest that the sights and impressions are physiologically driven.
• I wonder if a Muslim would hear Bible quotes like yay though I walked through the Valley of the shadow of death.
• I thought I had a NDE the day Trump was re-elected.
• I hope Jeffie spends eternity having to watch 'melania'. No snack or bathroom breaks.
• we are as mountains
• that crumble and then come forth
• as new continents
• Well, maybe we can collectively help Amazon have a real death experience.