It’s a question that has baffled the greatest human minds throughout history: what happens when we die?
Now, scientists have taken us one step closer to finally knowing the truth.
Researchers interviewed 48 people who have had near–death experiences (NDEs) and asked them what they saw in their final moments.
Their responses revealed a staggering variety of visions.
Some participants described seeing heavenly beings, while one even said they experienced a terrifying journey into a black hole.
Others, meanwhile, described grand visions featuring religious figures and profound emotional experiences.
For example, one participant told scientists: ‘There were stone stairs on the left in front of me, and Jesus was toward the top, wearing a white robe,’ while another described how ‘God appeared as a great light in the distance.’
Yet some people’s visions of the afterlife were far more fantastical, featuring bizarre elements that you wouldn’t find anywhere in the Bible.
Scientists interviewed 48 people about what they saw during their near–death experiences. Their answers range from classic visions of tunnels and lights to bizarre encounters with otherworldly beings
Participants were asked to describe what they saw when they had their near-death experience, and to sketch the geometry of the experience
NDEs are intense and often life–changing experiences that occur during life–threatening situations such as cardiac arrest or respiratory failure.
Estimates suggest that about four to eight per cent of the general public have had an NDE.
However, despite being surprisingly common, scientists have struggled to find a way of systematically studying such intense and personal experiences.
In a new study, currently awaiting peer review, researchers tried to categorise NDEs by interviewing people about the ‘geometry’ of their experience.
Surprisingly, these interview sessions revealed that no two people experienced exactly the same thing as they approached death.
Even people who had visions of religious figures like God, Jesus, and the angels saw wildly different things.
One participant described how they ‘became light’ and saw ‘Jesus at my right, bearded, robed, there to show me the way out’.
Another told the interviewers: ‘God force entered from in front of me toward the right. I had the feeling of wanting to lift my head up, but could not or felt that I shouldn’t.’
Many individuals reported seeing religious figures such as God or Jesus. The researchers say this is because our cultural beliefs provide the ‘scaffold’ for the near–death experience hallucinations
Some participants recalled fantastical visions of strange beings and journeys to unknown locations, while others were much simpler and only described lights or tunnels
Meanwhile, another participant gave an incredibly detailed description of an ‘angel’ that had come to visit them in their final moments.
They said this being had ‘exquisite white wings, the feathers incredibly detailed and layered onto one another and his face was that of a Greek god, very symmetrical and with polished hair like you see in Greek statues.’
Speaking to the Daily Mail, lead author Dr France Lerner, of the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, explained how our cultural background provides the ‘scaffold’ for the hallucinations caused by an NDE.
This might explain why one participant reported hearing ‘men reading the Torah’ rather than seeing Christian iconography.
On the other hand, many people’s NDEs had no religious content at all and contained many of the classic near–death features such as bright lights and long tunnels.
One participant described being ‘enveloped with an organic tunnel that was completely black, but had iridescent qualities.’
Other participants reported seeing scenes that would be more suited to a sci–fi film than a religious text, including a terrifying visit to a ‘black hole’
Another recalled: ‘I was in the centre of an immense bubble of light, I saw no edge of this bubble, it enveloped me completely. I can say that I was part of it, this light was the most beautiful ever seen.’
In a few haunting accounts, some participants even described encounters with loved ones – including those who had long since passed away.
‘I saw my aunts Elizabeth and Linnie as they were when they were younger women, I only knew them when they were sixty–seventy years old,’ one participant told the scientists.
However, some participants’ NDEs were even stranger and contained elements which would be more at home in a science fiction film than a religious text.
For example, one person recalled seeing a black hole, saying: ‘A black hole looks black from afar. The light was so bright it was hard to see all colours, they were still there.’
One participant had an even more unusual vision, telling researchers that they saw ‘a matrix, with many, many grid points, all connecting to each other in multiple dimensions.’
They added: ‘I felt that if I entered the matrix, I would be able to travel anywhere in the entire universe, simply by thinking about it.’
Although their visions were wildly diverse, the researchers also found that these experiences play out in four distinct types of space.
One person told the scientists that they saw the Matrix with ‘many, many grid points, all connecting to each other in multiple dimensions’. They also had the powerful belief that this Matrix could take them anywhere in the universe
The first, which they call A–shapes, are scenes where the visual field is a narrow cone.
The researchers believe that these might be caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, which causes the peripheral vision to fail and creates tunnel vision.
So–called B–shapes and C–shapes, meanwhile, take place in elliptical or arch–shaped regions and are likely triggered as half of the visual field is temporarily lost.
The final type, known as C5–shapes, takes place within a full 360–degree ‘ellipsoidal enclosure’.
Interestingly, the researchers found that people typically progressed from an A–shape to a C5–shape experience as their NDE progressed, suggesting that they share the same physical cause.
The researchers say that all NDEs are caused by a ‘breakdown’ in the coherence between visual and other physical inputs that normally sustains our sense of bodily unity.
Dr Lerner explained that the shape of an NDE was caused by the way our visual field changes when the brain starts to shut down.
Importantly, she says this doesn’t imply that there is a separate soul or that our consciousness is capable of somehow leaving the body.
