Before leaving our discussion of the NDE literature, a recap of what scientifically oriented critics have to say will be informative. Some of these criticisms apply equally to other types of spirit related experiences. Perhaps most obvious is that because accounts are subjective reports of inner experience, there is no way of validating that they happened as described or even at all. Perhaps, for any number of reasons they could have been made up by the people reporting them. However, this seems highly unlikely Most importantly, people who report more intense NDEs say that they were significantly changed, and these changes are immediately obvious to the people who know them well.
If one grants that those reporting NDE’s have been truthful, a number of questions have been raised as to why and how they occur. Early on very careful studies established that they cross religious, cultural, personality, and even age, lines. Operating within the accepted materialist paradigm, the explanations put forward pretty much view them as some kind of hallucination, very real to those experiencing them, but ultimately not “really real.” The cause of these hallucinations has been attributed to physiological or psychological factors. They could be the result of physiological and chemical changes in the brain accompanying the process of death. Several such changes have been suggested including a lack of brain oxygen, increased carbon dioxide, the release of endorphins, which are the body’s own morphine-like substance, and a specific type of seizure known as temporal lobe epilepsy, which resembles an electrical storm in the brain. Careful analysis by experts on the functioning of the brain in dying people have ruled out all of these as likely candidates. Still another obvious possibility is that medications may cause NDE type hallucinations. However, some people reporting NDEs did not receive any medication.
Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, who described his NDE in a best-selling 2012 book Proof of Heaven, reported that following his experience he immersed himself in the literature trying to understand how science viewed what had occurred. As a neurosurgeon he had specialized knowledge to bring to bear on the possible explanations typically offered. Perhaps his NDE was a distorted recall of memories from deeper parts of his limbic system. But without a functioning neocortex, as he claimed, the limbic system could not produce the clear and logical visions he experienced. Perhaps the experience was a kind of psychedelic vision produced by some of the many drugs he was on. However, all those drugs work with receptors in the neocortex. He had no functioning neocortex. Another possibility could be what is called a REM intrusion, a syndrome related to “rapid eye movement” sleep in which natural neurotransmitters such as serotonin interact with receptors in the neocortex. But for this to happen a functioning neocortex is necessary.
There’s a hypothetical phenomenon known as a “DMT dump” in which the pineal gland, reacting to the stress of a perceived threat to the brain, produces a substance that can bring on an extremely intense psychedelic state. But DMT affects the neocortex. Perhaps his experience was a “primitive brainstem program that evolved to ease terminal pain and suffering.” However, there was no way that his experiences, with their “intensely sophisticated visual and aural levels and their high degree of perceived meaning” could have been the product of the reptilian portion of his brain. Another hypothesis, called the “reboot phenomenon,” is based on computer functioning. Just as a computer, restarting after a system-wide failure, saves what it can, his experience might have been an assembly of essentially disjointed memories and thoughts left over from before his cortex went completely down. However, this seemed very unlikely given the intricacies and interactivity of his elaborate recollections.
Alexander concluded
The more 1 read of the “scientific” explanations of what NDEs are, the more 1 was shocked by their transparent flimsiness. And yet 1 also knew with chagrin that they were exactly the ones that the old “me” would have pointed to vaguely if someone had asked me to “explain what an NDE is. (Alexander, 2012, pp. 143 – 144)
From a psychological perspective NDEs can be viewed as hallucinations created by the mind to counter fears about imminent death. Rather than fears of some scary unknown that might be likely at the moment of death, NDEs offer a convincing fantasy of a wonderful experience of feeling a loving presence and meeting deceased loved ones. This hypothesis clearly is not supported by the facts. Some people having no knowledge that they are about to die have sudden heart attacks, experience brain death, and then have an NDE. Some NDE’s or portions of them are clearly unpleasant and not what one would have wished for. Howard Storm’s experience is a prime example. Some in the life review phase are quite confrontational, bringing people face to face with painful aspects of their behavior. Again, Howard’s experience is an example.
Near death experiences and other mystical experiences offer detailed accounts of a reality beyond the ordinary world where we live. Hallucinations are typically fragmentary, illogical, and usually symptomatic of serious psychological dysfunction. They do not contain insights of a spiritual nature.