A near death experience can be a life changing event for someone who has experienced it. It’s usually explained as a surreal experience, with people on the brink of death or even having died momentarily and been brought back to life, saying that they have found themselves floating above their body, or passing through a long tunnel towards a bright light. Some people have even said that they have met relatives who have passed away who have turned them back because it isn’t their time.

But what exactly is a near death experience?

For those who have them, it’s a very vivid and emotional experience, and one that can change lives forever.

The Three Types of Near Death Experiences

The Journal of The Missouri State Medical Association says that there are 3 different kinds of near death experience, and I’m inclined to agree. They describe them as inverse, void and hellish.

Inverse seems to be the type where the person finds themself floating above their body, looking down on whatever is happening to them, and then travelling down a tunnel or a road towards a big bright light, often passing loved ones on the way. These generally end with the person falling back into their body and feeling that they’ve been given a second chance.

One reader sent in this experience.

“I remember my mum telling me about when she had to have an emergency hysterectomy. It was about three years after my dad died.

After the operation, when the consultant was checking in on her, she told him that she had had a dream that my dad had come for her. He was at the other side of a river and was asking her to go to him. She was about half way across when she said no – she had the children to look after. The consultant then told her that her heart had stopped and they thought that they had lost her, but they managed to bring her back.”

Another reader sent this:

“I used to ride some really fast motorcycles and was always falling off. I’d come around a bend too quickly and wipe out. Or I’d hit a patch of something on the road and just slide off. The last ride I ever had I was going way too fast down a coast road and I hit the smallest of rocks – but it sent me sideways down the road under my bike and then over the edge of the road into a small ravine. Luckily another car saw me go over, and they called for help straight away.

I remember unbelievable pain, and then passing out. When I came to, I was floating above my body looking down at the EMT’s working on me. I was yelling at them to put me back in my body, but they couldn’t hear me.

Then I was yanked up towards the sky and a huge bright light. I passed family who had died on the way up – they were smiling and waving at me as I travelled past. I finally came to a stop in front of my dear Mom, who had passed away a few years earlier. She gave me the hugest hug and whispered, ‘Not yet’ in my ear. Then I was falling back down again, towards my body which was now on a stretcher and being lifted up and into an ambulance.

I crashed into my body and opened my eyes wide. The two EMTs were so shocked. And all I could do was say ‘Hi’.

I spent months in the hospital, and the doctors said I was lucky to be alive. I must have agreed with that, because I never rode another motorcycle ever again. I went back to school and became a counsellor. I wasn’t going to waste my second chance.”

I had many emails from people who said that they walked along a path and came to some gates where they met a man they thought was God or Jesus, but he wouldn’t let them enter. Instead he turned them back so that they could return to their bodies, and they have woken up from accidents, surgery, or an illness. It would seem that if somebody was religious in any way, they would have this kind of image with their experience.

The Void

The void type of near death experience possibly explains itself. With this kind of NDE, people experience floating through space, or water, or a black void of nothingness. The experience can be one of agony or ecstasy, but most people seem to find it quite scary, being surrounded by darkness.

I have my own experience with this version, which I’ll share with you, even though it’s not something I’ve really ever talked about.

I was going through some really brutal chemotherapy a while back, and I was maybe 4 months in on a massive 2.5 litre pump every 3 weeks. Every treatment had taken its toll on my body, making me weaker and weaker, and I was getting to the stage where I really just wanted to lie down and sleep a lot.

I remember laying on my bed one sunny afternoon, and I must have drifted off, because all of a sudden, I felt like I was sinking through my mattress and into a huge expanse of nothing. It was all black, and I just seemed to be floating slowly down, sinking deeper and deeper into this void. It wasn’t scary or threatening to me. I just remember feeling safe and warm, and my mind went to that episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where she was explaining how she felt when she was dead, before they brought her back to life.

After a while I had a feeling that I had to wake up, and if I didn’t wake up, I would be dead. So I kept saying to myself over and over ‘wake up, wake up, wake up’, until I did.

When I woke, it wasn’t unpleasant, and there wasn’t anything remarkable about it, I just woke up thinking ‘that was a bit weird.’ But I did sit up in bed after that and force myself to stay awake.

The Gates To Hell

The third kind of NDE is described in Missouri Medicine as the Hellish NDE, which are near death experiences where people believe that they have been dragged down to hell or somewhere similarly horrific. They explain that this is the least common type of NDE, but quite often the most distressing, with those who have had them being left traumatised for years afterwards.

These experiences often involve the person being led or dragged down into the earth or a void, until they’re at huge fiery gates or the entrance to a big scary cave. There have been reports of beings – demons or spirits – taking the person to their final destination, where they have had to fight to get back to their reality.

One woman even describes being able to smell and hear the beings that dragged her to her hell over forty years later.

So How Do We Explain Near Death Experiences?

So a near death experience is something that happens when someone is at the point of death, or has died and been brought back. For instance, if someone has died from cardiac arrest and has managed to be resuscitated and brought back to life. It’s a no brainer. It’s in the description – near death experience.

But not everybody who experiences getting close to death reports having a near death experience. The same as not everybody who dies and is resuscitated reports seeing anything in the minutes that they were gone.

That’s not to say that these things didn’t happen. I’ve had the experience myself, so I know that it’s something of a reality. But is it a divine happening? Are we passing on to the afterlife? Or is there a scientific explanation for it all?

We know that the brain is a very powerful thing. It’s the central processor that works our whole bodies – and that is not an easy feat.

The brain can make us have crazy dreams – from the pleasurable to the downright petrifying – and all while we’re unconscious. Psychology has proven that we can hide things away for long periods of time, having them surface when we least expect it. So isn’t it logical that at our time of dying, our brain will be doing all sorts of crazy shit?

It’s widely thought that the brain is the last thing to die when our body is closing down, so it’s not unreasonable to think that it would be firing on all cylinders with all sorts of confusion, making us see or think all manner of things.

My personal opinion is that it’s similar to when you eat cheese before bed and have nightmares of being chased by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man – the brain is going into overdrive and giving us all sorts of thoughts and feelings, which is why we all see different things.

Because if it were a real thing and we were passing over to the other side, wouldn’t it be more logical for us all to see the same thing and take the same journey?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Until next time…