Near-Death Experiencers Come Back With the Same Message, Researchers Say It’s One the World Needs

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Scott Drummond died on the operating table when he was 28, and experienced something that completely changed the way he viewed life before he was resuscitated 20 minutes later.

But he told almost no one until 40 years later.

During the COVID pandemic, Drummond felt the world needed hope as millions grappled with questions of life and death and the loss of their loved ones. He agreed to tell his story in a video that now has 21 million views, now with the heading “Most Watched Near Death Experience Of All Time.”

He spoke of how he lost his fear of death, what he felt in the presence of a being he could not look at but knew to be God, the beauty of heaven, and immense peace and sense of love he was given. In the 47,000-plus comments, many share their stories of loss, grief, and healing.

Drummond had shared his experience in small bits and pieces with his wife, but almost with no one else. He asked for her opinion before he agreed to tell his story; he was unsure because he didn’t want people to degrade the experience he had, and he wanted them to know it was real. She said they would, and Drummond said a prayer to God, saying if this was what He wanted, Drummond would do so. In the answer he received, Drummond decided that if he could affect one person positively, it would be worth it. In a follow-up interview one year later, he shared he has received countless stories from others who had similar experiences.

What Is a Near-Death Experience?

The term “near-death experience” was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody in his 1975 book “Life After Life,” but the concept has existed since antiquity. In fact, Moody credits his interest in the phenomenon to Plato, who wrote of a warrior’s account of an out-of-body experience during his brush with death.

In the 1960s, cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques were adopted across the country, which meant many people with cardiac arrests were now able to be brought back to life. Those in the medical fields started hearing more stories from survivors who experienced something when, given their lack of brain and heart activity, it should have been medically impossible for the patients to have any sort of consciousness. As doctors started researching, writing, and talking about these events, awareness grew and a field of research emerged.

The Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) defines a near-death experience as “a lucid experience associated with perceived consciousness apart from the body occurring at the time of actual or threatened imminent death.”

Professor and psychiatrist Bruce Greyson developed in the 1980s a scale for measuring (pdf) the depth of such experiences after investigating the characteristics of 80 near-death experiences. Greyson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, is one of the leading researchers and experts on the topic, and the co-founder of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).

NDERF has collected more than 5,000 such stories from experiencers, making it the largest website of its kind. Dr. Jeffrey Long, founder of NDERF, developed a detailed survey for experiencers to fill out, and from that compiled several commonalities existing across near-death experiences. These include out-of-body experiences where the experiencer is witnessing their own resuscitation, rapid acceleration through darkness, meeting a being of light often described as a higher power, and an overwhelming sense of love as the vast majority report a positive and pleasurable experience.

Researchers were very quickly able to discern that near-death experiences were not created by the brain, or seemingly the body at all, but that the experiencers were still very much conscious.

“A near-death experience is an immersion in an alternate reality,” Dr. Jan Holden, president of IANDS, told The Epoch Times. “And it’s an experience that, especially in the Western world, particularly in the U.S., our culture just does not prepare people for this possibility.”

“Now, that message is limited in that everyone who reports a near-death experience didn’t stay dead; we don’t know how things might change once the body is permanently, irreversibly dead,” Holden said. “But there are a lot of  indications, from other phenomena like after-death communication, past-life memories, and so forth, that also point to the survival of consciousness after permanent, irreversible, physical, bodily death.”

Holden is the editor-in-chief of the scholarly Journal of Near-Death Studies, and has edited and co-edited numerous publications on near-death experiences. She served 31 years on the University of North Texas Counseling Program faculty and has developed courses for health professionals in counseling those who have had such experiences.

“When it happens, most people are surprised, confused, they don’t necessarily have a context to put the experience in,” said Holden.

This is one reason many near-death experiencers may not share what they experienced.

Surveys show that the vast majority of experiencers felt transformed for the better afterward. Some of the more well-known near-death experience stories could be called miracles: people who lost all hope in life experience something that allows them to meet all challenges henceforth with positivity and courage, people who lost all faith meet God and experience an all-encompassing love and forgiveness they bring into the rest of their lives, or people who have terminal illnesses or injuries that should have killed them are rapidly healed.

But many of these stories come out years, even decades after someone has had the experience. Holden notes that research shows the average is seven years before someone has fully integrated the experience into their lives.

“It can be very challenging to return and be transformed, and as a result of the changes that people experience it has reverberations in their social life,” she said. Some people change careers, social circles, romantic partners. “Their values have shifted.” The changes tend to grow over time, and the data shows this transformation is significantly greater than value, attitude, or life changes one might make after a close brush with death without a near-death experience, Holden added.

Another reason more stories are emerging is simply increased awareness, several near-death experiencers shared. Today, there is a vocabulary for the phenomenon, there are places for people to share such stories, and more people in the medical professions and general population are aware of what a near-death experience is and isn’t.

Barbara Bartolome, who leads the Santa Barbara chapter of IANDS, said when she had a near-death experience in the 80s, she was quickly dismissed by the medical staff, and didn’t speak of it again until 12 years later. Recently, she gave a talk at the local hospital and was told by the organizer she drew one of the biggest crowds of their talks series, with some 60 doctors and 40 nurses.

“I think they’re coming around, slowly but surely,” she said.

The Message

Those who say these experiences are evil or of the devil are in the minority, as the research just does not support this, Holden said.

“These experiences are spiritually benevolent,” Holden said. A “litmus test” for this exists in the Bible, where it is said that an experience that comes from the Holy Spirit produces, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, and the research shows that these experiences do increase one or more of these traits and promotes spiritual development towards those qualities.

Near-death experiencers who share their stories overwhelmingly share a message about love.

“The only thing that matters is how we treat others with kindness and love,” wrote an experiencer from Germany who was in a car accident in a desert in South Africa.

“We are sent to Earth to love and be loved unconditionally,” wrote a woman who had the experience when she was 12. “I was told my mission was to speak to the world about my experience and to teach that God is love and our purpose here is to show love and kindness to everyone. Heaven is REAL.”

“The whole experience was turning around this love. It is the base of everything, at the source of everything and we are carrying it in us. This love is so powerful that it could destroy us and burn us, as its intensity is unimaginable. This love had nothing to do with carnal desire or classical love feelings, it was a Force, a Power an inconceivable Energy that had nothing in common with what we on earth call ‘love’. This love was constituent of the essence of things and the world itself. It was at the same time in us and around us,” wrote a man from France.

“The light was not blinding and it was so beautiful. And above all, it was so warm. This white place was full of love, sweetness, warmth and peace. But I felt Love at its highest when three immense columns of light came in front of me,” wrote a woman from Italy who experienced multiple near-death experiences when she was young. “Love is totally misunderstood and Earth is a great school and opportunity to teach us about Love.”

“If more people got this message, the world would be a better place,” said Holden.

“Once [people] understand the reality of near-death experience, that’s where things get really exciting, and they can start to learn about the deeper lessons of near-death experience, such as God ... consciousness, afterlife,” said Long of NDERF, to The Epoch Times. “I mean these are some of the great questions that humanity has faced throughout all of its existence. And here seems to be, through near-death experiences, if you will, a portal to better understanding ... what we can learn is perhaps the most powerful and positive message for humanity that I can even conceive of.”

Greyson, who published the book “After” two years ago sharing his personal understandings from 40 years of research on near-death experiences, felt they taught us more lessons about life than the afterlife.

“It is my hope that learning about near-death experiences will also give you the spark to reevaluate your life and reconnect with the things that fill your life with ever greater meaning and joy,” he wrote.

An estimated 1 in 20-25 Americans have had a near-death experience, and surveys show anywhere between 5 percent and 18 percent of those who experience cardiac arrest have a near-death experience.

Nothing in research answers why some people have near-death experiences and others, even in exact medical conditions, do not.

“Everything we’ve done to try to compare these two groups, we’ve come up with nothing,” Holden said. “We’ve looked at how long were they dead? What were the circumstances of their death? Everything to their gender, sexual orientation, whether they were a nice person or a nasty person—nothing explains to us why some people have NDEs and some people don’t.”

Unsurprisingly, many people who learn about near-death experiences want to know what it feels like.

“If a lot of people have this experience and become more compassionate, more service-oriented, and so forth, it could change the world,” she said. Of course, they don’t want to almost die to do it, Holden added.

Many researchers and experiencers also report that one does not need to have a near-death experience to have a positive and transformative experience, and in fact many who listen or read near-death experience stories walk away with some similar changes: they can be more compassionate, charitable, less materialistic, and/or lose their fear of death, among other things.

“Most come back with a message or learning that each of our lives have meaning, and the purpose of our life on earth is to advance in our capacity to love and also to acquire knowledge ... those are attitudes or intentions that provide hope to people,” Holden said.