In 1982, a young stained-glass artist by the name of Mellen-Thomas Benedict lay dying of an inoperable brain tumor. In order to have the best quality of life before his immanent death, Benedict declined chemotherapy treatments. After about 18 months of hospice care, Benedict woke up one day around 4:30 a.m., knowing he was going to die. A few hours later, Benedict had a near-death experience in which he perceived being surrounded by a beautiful shining light that he automatically felt was a symbol of the “source” or “higher self.” He described the experience as one of joy and peace: “It was just overwhelming. It was all the love you’ve ever wanted, and it was the kind of love that cures, heals, regenerates.”
He described feeling a strong desire to communicate and travel toward this light that emanated love, peace, harmony, as human souls swam around him. Benedict’s own consciousness expanded — perceiving and knowing all things from all time. It was this stage of infinite consciousness that revealed to him that death should not be seen as an “end” but instead as a transition into the infinite reality of being: immortality.
Benedict was clinically dead. His nurse rushed to his bedside and found no vital signs, no blood pressure or cardiac activity. Shortly after leaving the room, she heard a loud crash. Upon returning, she found him lying on the floor, trying to reach the window. Within three days, Benedict was discharged from the hospice and felt better than he had ever felt before. Three months later, follow-up brain scans were performed and astonishingly showed no signs of the tumor. Benedict’s physician referred to this occurrence as a “spontaneous remission” (which is commonly known as a spontaneous regression: the spontaneous cure or improvement of a severe disease). But Benedict chose to call it a miracle.
Within the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in people reporting near-death experiences like Benedict’s. Multiple surveys conducted throughout the United States, Australia, and Germany suggest that 4 to 15 percent of the population has had near-death experiences. One study found that nearly 800 people in the United States encounter a near-death experience every single day.
Even though there have been an increasing number of people willing to “come out of the closet” and talk about these “higher consciousness” incidents, near-death experiences have been occurring for thousands of years.
Back in the year 300 B.C., Plato described the near-death experience of a warrior named Er, who, after being slain in battle, woke up on his funeral pyre to tell the surrounding crowd about meeting deities and fallen companions in the afterlife.
In 1741, George de Benneville, a physician and lay minister in Europe, wrote a vivid account of his near-death experience, one which included all of the common motifs: “I quickly came to a place which appeared to my eyes as a level plain, so extensive that my sight was not able to reach its limits, filled with all sorts of delightful fruit trees and which sent forth such fragrant odors that all the air was filled as with incense.”
Fast-forward about two and a half centuries, and we find that soldiers and ministers aren’t the only ones having near-death experiences. One of the most fascinating groups of individuals to have undergone such events are neurologists.
Dr. Eben Alexander, appointed professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and best-selling author of the autobiographical book “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife,” was skeptical about near-death experiences — until November 10, 2008, when he became comatose due to a rare form of meningitis. Despite multiple procedures and antibiotic treatments over a seven-day period, Alexander’s body deteriorated fast and his team of physicians soon gave up hope.
Then a week later, Alexander miraculously awoke to the amazement of his family and doctors and realized that his previous notions of near-death experiences were totally wrong. He described his enigmatic incident as being transformative and “indescribable.” He experienced a unified consciousness and was aware of “a divine presence” which conveyed thoughts of love and peace: “You are loved. You are cherished forever. There’s nothing you can do wrong. You have nothing to worry about. You will be taken care of.”
Alexander also described the occurrence as being “hyperreal and extremely crisp and vivid.” In a conversation with Diana DiFranco — holistic psychotherapist and frequent lecturer at the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences — she described to me how near-death experiences are commonly felt as being “more real than everyday life.” Colors, smells, and sensations become fully optimized like never before.
After this event, Alexander had to change his previous thoughts about near-death experiences and invite a new understanding of the brain into his work: “That hyperreality that people describe … is not something that is going to be explained by [this] little simplistic talking about CO2 and oxygen levels. That just won’t work. I promise you that won’t work.”
This statement directly challenges the notions of Dr. Lakhmir Chawla, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at George Washington University. Chawla asserts that near-death experiences are simply caused by a surge of electrical activity as the brain runs out of oxygen before death. However, the oxygen-depletion theory is only one of many classical neurophysiological theories challenged by people who have undergone near-death experiences.
