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Approved For Relea es 2° 2001/03/26 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080041-9 


Life After Death? 


The experience is a familiar one to 
many cmergency-room medics. A pa- 
tient who has been pronounced dead and 
unexpectedly recovers later describes 
what happened to him during those mo- 
ments—sometimes hours—when _ his 
body exhibited no signs of life. Accord- 
ing to one repeated account, the patient 
feels himself rushing through a long, 
dark tunnel while noise rings in his cars. 
Suddenly, he finds himself outside his 
own body, looking down with curi- 
ous detachment at a medical team’s 
efforts to resuscitate him. He hears 
what is said, notes what is happen- 
ing but cannot communicate with 
anyone. Soon, his attention is 
drawn to other presences in the 
room—spirits of dead relatives or 
friends—who communicate with 
him nonverbally. Gradually, he is 
drawn to a vague “being of light.” 
This being invites him to evaluate 
his life and shows him highlights of 
his past in panoramic vision. The 
paticnt longs to stay with the being 
of light but is rcluctantly drawn 
back into his physical body and 
recovers, 

Clues: Once dismissed as noth- 
ing more than hallucinations, 
these “near death” experiences 
are now being seriously examined 
by several psychiatrists and psy- 
chologists for possible clues to 
what happens at the moment of 
death. One such researcher, Dr. 
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, an interna- 
tionally respected expert on the 
psychiatric dimensions of dying, 
now claims that she has proof that 
“there is life after death” on the 
basis of hundreds of such storics. 
Although other psychologists be- 
lieve that Dr. Kubler-Ross lends 
too much credence to tales told by 
the dying, her outspoken views 
have recently heightened scholar- 
ly interest in near-death phenomena. 

What most impresses Kublcr-Ross 
about the cases she has assembled over 
the last eight years is the evidence of out- 
of-body consciousness—that is, the ap- 
parent ability of people who exhibit no 
respiration, heartbeat or brain-wave ac- 
tivity to describe events taking place 
around them. She is currently checking 
out each case against medical records for 


abook she plans to publish next year. “Lf 


you have a woman who has been de- 
elared dead ina hospital and she can tell 
you exactly how many people walked 
into the room and worked on her, this 
cannot be hallucination,” she argues. 
Although details of near-death accounts 
vary somewhat, Kubler-Ross says that all 
her subjects report certain common ex- 
periences: a pervasive sense of calm 
well-being, a feeling of personal whole- 


have lost limbs 
being greeted by previously deceased 
loved ones. As a result of such experi- 
ences, she says, “many of them resented 
our desperate attempts to bring them 
back to life. Death is the fecling of peace 
and hope. Not one of them has ever been 
afraid to die again. 

In a serics of in-depth interviews 
conducted independently of Kubler- 
Ross’s research, another physician has 
discovered extraordinary — similarities 
among 50 near-death experiences result- 


Bettman Archive 


Fifteenth-century woodcut of soul leaving body 


ing from accidents, ilness and sudden 
cardiac arrest. According to Dr. Ray- 
mond A. Moody Jr., who holds a doctor- 
ate in philosophy as well as a medical 
degree, many subjects experienced en- 
hanced intellectual capabilities and, 
upon recovery, amazed doctors by their 
unusually technical knowledge of resus- 
citation procedures. 

Unlike Kubler-Ross, Moody does 1ot 
claim scientific proof of an afterlife. But 
he does believe that most near-death 
experiences cannot be readily explained 
away as delusions induced by pain- 
killing drugs: the narratives, he says, are 
too clear and too similar to once another. 
In his popular paperback “Life After 
Life,’* Moody also dismisses cultural 
conditioning as an explanation because 
the reported expericnces do not conform 


and the experience of 


to ce. temporary American images of 
déatli. On the contrary, he asserts that 
“the picture of the events of dying which 
emecrpves from these accounts corre- 
sponds in a striking way with that paint- 
ed in very ancient and esoteric writings 
totallh unfamiliar to my subjects.” In 
particular, Moody finds that the experi- 
ences of floating out of the body, mecting 
spiritual companions and encountering a 
being of light are remarkably analagous 
to images found in the Tibetan Book of 
the Dead. 

As part of yet another cffort to track 
down «lues “that would suggest an after- 
life,” psychologist Karlis Osis of the 
American Socicty for Psychical Re- 
search in New York City bas tabu- 
lated by computer interviews with 
877 physicians who have reported 
leathbed visions by their patients. 
Most of them involve dying pa- 
tients who see benign apparitions 
-oming for their souls. Osis has 
letermined, at least to his own 

atisfaction, that patients whose 
brains were impaired by high fever 
uw discase reported fewer visions 
‘han those who were fully alert at 
death. Moreover, he asserts, pow- 
rful drugs such as morphine and 
Demerol actually decrease the co- 
herence of such visions. “The sick- 
train hypotheses we considercd 
do not explain the visions,” Osis 
oncludes, “and so far it looks as if 
patterns are emerging consistent 
vith survival after death.” 

Waiting for Data: Critics of afterlile 
-esearch have held thei fire until 
‘hey can see the data that Kubler- 
Koss publishes. Stil], savs psy chia- 
ivist Charles Dahlberg of New York 
“Iniversity, “TE don’t see how you 

an set up the control group need- 
dto examine this subject scientifi- 
cally. The afterlife is a matter of 
jaith.” Father ugene Kennedy, a 
Roman Catholic priest and profes- 
sor of psychology at Chicago's Loy- 
‘la University, finds Kubler-Ross’s 
new focus “a falling-off from her 
previous work which related death 
to the whole of human life.” Kennedy, 
for one, believes that “intimations of 
immortality don’t come from vaporous 
expers'nces at life's end but from the 
love and creativity we exercise to over- 
come the tragedies of life.” 

ven if Kubler-Ross has not proved 
her peint, she has laid out phenomena 
that modern science has not yet ade- 
quately explained. “I don’t at all agree 
with Mhsabeth when she says that the 
expersnces she and [ have both had 
working with the dying absolutely guar 
amtee fife after death,” says Dr. Charles 
Garficid of the Cancer Research lnsti- 
tute ©! the University of California. “It 
also don’t take the extreme scientific- 
mater dist position that these are the 
utterances of deranged persons. | dot 
really know what is happening, and Lam 
williny to tolerate the ambiguity.” 


ness CVC IN BTOVER Fol REBAse 2001/03/26" CIA:RDP96-0 00787 ROOOZOO08004*9 "hs eros 


Newsweek, July 12, 1976 


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