BIBLICAL BRIEFS 145
Many believers’ defense that people go to heaven or hell when they die, even though the Bible does not say that, is based on testimonies of persons who die after a sickness, crash or calamity, and then live to tell the story. These are usually dramatic testimonies of what happened during this experience in which they were “taken away into the third heaven” (2Cor. 12: 2), a phrase often misused to explain this mystical experience. In his book, The Light Beyond, Raymond Moody gives ten common “markers” for NDE’s (near-death experiences) that are common to all faith groups, even those who believe in “nothing”, i.e. secularists or non-believers: An awareness that you are dead; peace, and no pain; a feeling or consciousness that you leave your body; movement through a tunnel; engagements with “persons of light”; a meeting with a “Being of Light”; your whole life flashing in front of you; a very fast transportation to heaven; an unease, even unwillingness, to return; and a totally different sense of time and space. People who are on their way to ‘hell’ feel “imprisoned” in a meaningless, confusing wandering; there is an awareness of other beings who are aimlessly moving around, captive in their own burning desires, hate and fear. George Hover, in his book, What Happens When I Die?, says that research shows that Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and non-believers almost all have the same experiences, with only one exception – the identification of the Mystical Figures and their names. Each faith has its own representations of his God/god(s)/idols/saints/beings and will name them accordingly. There is extensive research that found that no Hindu saw Jesus, no Christian a Hindu god! An Aboriginal of Australia in his NDE encounters the Tortoise Man Spirit. Another important fact is that in the NDE’s of Christians, who claim they have seen Jesus, they have different descriptions of what Jesus looks like. They for instance say that his hair colour is brown/black/gold, while Rev. 1:14 says, “The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow.” Surely they cannot all be right? Research on NDE’s shows that in 99.9% of cases the persons were not clinically dead. Dr Greene, in If I Should Wake Before I Die, make this categorical statement: “Almost by definition, the person who has a memory of the ‘death process’ was not, in fact, dead.” NDE’s were ultimately the result of certain physiological processes while the body and the brain fought for survival. The state of shock of the body and the brain’s responsibility to make sense, often leads to a combination of depersonalisation and detachment (resulting in the “I look down on my own body” experience) and even visual hallucinations (due to the lack of blood flow to the brain and chemical imbalances, mainly due to a lack of glucose supply). The blood flow to the brain is essential for the process of life (and consciousness), and any threat causes more blood to go to the brain (by enlarging the veins to the brain and narrowing the rest of the body’s arteries) therefore, much more oxygen, which brings about an essential sense of euphoria, peace, joy, and happiness, even delirium. Chemically-induced medication during surgery may, of course, bring about several psychological experiences: clear images, sensations of flying or very fast moving, faster thinking and imagination, and even “religious” consciousness. When the body is in severe stress (for example injuries during an accident or trauma during surgery), the pituitary gland secretes large amounts of endorphins (the body’s natural morphine) to block pain and to make the body feel good. One of the consequences of cardiac arrest is an experience of moving down the tunnel of light. Of all these dramatic physiological events, the brain must make sense, at all costs. The psychology of NDE, of course, involves the brain’s ability and function to integrate all information into a sense-making fiction. Man’s total experience of reality, and dealing with it, is a function of his faith. What the person experiences in the hour of imminent death must be rationalised by the brain. All psychological thinking modes and defence mechanisms are used to seize his quest for order. The brain’s unconscious mission is to build a knowledge system that captures and interprets all the trauma of the experience, “and to form patterns of explanation that might help him achieve some mastery about his environment” (Kline). This interpretation of new data is ALWAYS integrated with what the person heard earlier regarding the matter, in other words, that already exists in his knowledge system. Thus, the dying person’s experiences are interpreted within his existing unique conceptual order. What the dying person physiologically experiences, is interpreted by his conceptual frame of reference, strictly speaking, an expectation horizon. This integrated world is the result of everything we have heard from childbirth about death, the afterlife, heaven, hell, judgment, NDE’s, etc. which are all schematically integrated into our conceptual framework. The person who feels like he is dying is “explaining” all this. The dying man’s perception and experience on his deathbed is not a presentation of reality, but a representation, an interpretation based on his expectation horizon. It is visually intense, in motion, even experienced as voices that speak. It is “fused” by interference, so that it can morph into divine beings or deceased loved ones. Any influence on the temporal lobe of the brain can lead to déjà vu experiences, which brings about this dream experience. An important illusion that causes it, is called autoscopy, the sensation or belief that the patient perceives himself from a distance. Dr Greene concludes: “It would seem that any event that can be produced by stimulations of the brain is not really a vision of the afterlife or a trip to heaven. Such visions are simply a set of neural discharges that come from a complex area of the brain that integrates such functions as vision, emotion, hearing, memory, perception of time, language, moods, attitudes, and social behaviour.”
Dr Tom Gouws
