A near-death experience
Neil Crabtree links his experience to the Quaker faith
I am of the opinion that near-death experiences (NDE) are worthy of serious consideration among people who are concerned about violence and cruelty, for example, those involved in Quaker peace work.
How I arrived at this opinion requires a glimpse back to a time when alcohol and emotional problems, including my manic depression, caused me to behave with unkindness towards other people who cared for and trusted me. I do not wish to go into detail other than to say that these people all turned up to terrorise me as I lay in a state of extreme paranoid psychosis following a suicide attempt. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and when I closed them I was in a torture chamber designed specifically around my worst fears. The people present, who were obviously inner hallucinations, were as clear and real as in everyday life. All but one was still alive, and they created for me worlds of pitiless terror that were designed by a quiet telepathic voice.
A couple of years later, in 1995, my father collapsed at home with a cardiac arrest. Due to the distance the ambulance had to come, and the initial ineffectiveness of the defibrillator, he was without a heartbeat for about ten minutes. Luckily he was revived and, when he was able to speak, the first thing he said was that he had been with his mother and brother-in-law, who had been dead for some time. He also described a loving light. Despite the fact that I had experienced something with similar characteristics, the hallucinations of people, our experiences were otherwise so at odds with each other that I didn’t make the connection. Also, I had not heard of NDEs so I did not make the wider link.
It was twelve years later, following my father’s death that I began to come across books and articles on NDE written by surgeons, psychiatrists and psychologists. A constant theme was how many people who are close to death meet up with dead loved ones or, in the case of children in particular, gentle strangers or friends who are still alive. This is followed by a sense of leaving the body and travelling along a tunnel towards a loving light, which is usually referred to as God. All describe a gentle non-threatening inner voice, which sometimes encourages a brief life review where people consider how they have hurt others and could have done things differently.
What are of particular interest to me, with my own background, are the rarer reports of unpleasant ‘inverted’ experiences. These are varied but include descriptions similar to my own. It is difficult to pin-point this phenomenon as it is researched, possibly because it was ignored by some early writers who, with all good intention, were trying to sell feel-good books. Also, if this is connected to poor behaviour in life, it is possibly less likely that sufferers will admit to experiencing this hellish dimension. However, I do think it is connected to psychosis, which is not my own theory. In the 1950s, Aldous Huxley made this link in his book Heaven and Hell. Also, according to modern research into the subject, it appears that NDE generally can be stimulated by treating the part of the brain that causes psychotic illness. Obviously, this is not to say that people who suffer a psychosis are experiencing an NDE or suffering for their behaviour.
It is possible that our ancestors were aware of the NDE but without modern technology believed it was proof of life after death, whether in heaven or hell. This would help explain why so many historic religions, who had no contact with each other, believed that similar scenarios following death were dependent on behaviour in life. This is not to say that all people believed in this. Buddhism, for instance, is a cerebral movement that recognises that these events occur in the mind, in the dying stages of life. This is the theory that I believe in.
Whatever the reality is, I am of the opinion that this field of research, with its mention of a loving inner light, a gentle telepathic voice, and God, might be worthy of serious attention by Friends. The features of the positive NDE seem to speak directly to the condition of Quakerism, yet there appears to be little awareness of the subject. And with regard to the inverted experience, this would be of no deterrent as it only occurs in the head – there are many psychotic sufferers around who can testify that the mind is capable of creating places where it is best not to be.
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